[GRASS5] Bug tracking system ?

[Eric Mitchell]

Andreas Lange wrote:

> i looked at the bugzilla bug tracker recently and i think that a fully
> fledged bug-tracking system for grass is too much work.

A properly used defect tracking system is a critical part
of any successful long-term software project.  This system
may be manual, in fact I've used a quite successful system 
that consisted of one page report forms, filled out by hand,
and stored in a binder.  Developers pick a report from the 
binder, fix the problem (add the requested feature), staple
a correction report to it, and file it in a "fixed" binder.

Bugzilla is quite a capable system, as evidenced by its 
heavy use (and abuse) by the mozilla project.  

> Such a system would require:
> - setting up and maintaining the backend/server sofware (at
> intevation.de?)

Once bugzilla is up and running, it needs no more maintenance
than any other network resource.  It took me about a day to 
set up and initially configure the system, including reading
about mySQL permissions, and adding a few extra permissions
to the webserver.  

> - checking in all known bugs into the system

Scripts can help with this, and tasks like this are a *great*
way for volunteers with more time than programming experience
to help the project.

> - every developer maintaining the entries in the bug database etc.

When a bug gets fixed, that occurrence *must* be noted 
somehow, somewhere.  Otherwise, you'll get developers trying
to fix bugs more than once, and getting frustrated that the
bug they're trying to track down is already fixed.  I remember
hearing a lot about a problem that required an extra compiler
option (-fwritable-strings) on this very project.  I went to 
investigate the matter only to discover no such problem existed.
Had the bug fix been properly documented, I wouldn't have ever
spent the time trying to fix it.  This is also a step that only
has to occur once.

> - just more work for the bugfixing people that gets subtracted from the
> available time.

Quality software development is not just a matter of hacking
source code.  There is a lot of extraneous bits that need to
be worked on as well.  Tracking defects is but a small part 
of that.

> I would propose the following:
> unifing (simplifying?) of the bug report form on
> http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/bugtracking/bugreport.html, the
> script bug.report.sh from src/scripts/shells and other areas where this
> is used;
> 
> add a menue to tcltkgrass for bug reporting (i can do that);
> 
> set up a mail alias ("grass-bugs@?????") where all bug mails are sent
> to;
> 
> these mails should be archived somewhere where the developers can read
> them and could be automatically forwarded to grass5. The report form
> should be changed so that name and email can be anonymized (is this a
> concern? i don't know.).

I believe that bugzilla has a feature by which properly 
formatted mail messages can be imported as bug reports.
If not, someone with a spare day or two could implement
the feature.  Bug report summaries could be sent to the 
mailing list every day/week or so.

> Perhaps we should make a distinction between "compiling bugs" and
> "functionality bugs/module errors". One problem with the latter is that
> information on the grass database is needed to inspect them.
> 
> cu,
> 
> Andreas

Not that I think bugzilla is the perfect bug tracking system,
but it works well for several large open development efforts.
I'm not familiar with the current bug reporting features used
by GRASS, either.  

I think it would be constructive for someone to set up bugzilla 
in a "sandbox" in which the developers could play with it, and
get a feel for the system in general.

-- ebm
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| Eric B. Mitchell         mailto:emitchell at altaira.com |
| tel: (301) 809 - 3534    Altair Aerospace Corporation |
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