[GRASS-dev] new bug tracking for GRASS

[Maciej Sieczka]

Hi,

I'm pleased to officialy announce the new GRASS tracking system powered
by GForge ready to use.

GForge is a feature-rich system for collaborating on a software project
http://gforge.org/.

Thanks to Intevation GmbH http://www.intevation.de/index.en.html, who
invited us to use their GForge setup at http://wald.intevation.org/,
there are 9 trackers for GRASS now [1]:

 - code feature requests
 - code issues
 - code patches

 - doc feature requests
 - doc issues
 - doc patches

 - website feature requests
 - website issues
 - website patches

'issues' tracker is for bugs, and "bad features", aka "defects".

'feature reqests' for wishes.

'patches' trackers are for user submitted patches, if the user doesn't
have CVS write access but wants to share his fix/improvement. They will
also be used for patches which shouldn't go into CVS for a reason, but
we want to keep the track of them for later.

When an issue is reported and nobody picks it up right away, I'm going
to be the first contact person - ie. gather more info until it is a
good material for a developer to work on; I'll also prune duplicate
reports, close obvious wrong ones, etc. I can also fix some minor stuff
like docs, shell scripts etc. as time allows.

When a patch is submitted, and nobody steps up to take care of it,
there are first-contacts also, who will do a similar job here:

Jachym Chepicky - code patches.
Scott Mitchell	- website patches.
Martin Landa	- doc patches.

I will try to help if I can, too. Thanks Guys!

Trackers are available for public view, but in order to be able to post
(including creating a new report) and use all the features of the
trackers, you need to setup an account at GForge first [2] and join the
GRASS project at GForge [3].

All trackers' new submissions will be automatically forwarded to the
GRASS development mailing list [4]. All followup traffic will be stored
in the tracker and forwarded only to parties discussing the ticket.
However, any project member can "monitor" a ticket, or a whole tracker,
in order to receive all the related traffic (see GForge manual [6]).

GForge provides many functionalities. Currently we are going to use
only the trackers, as all the other functionalities are implemented in
the current GRASS infrastructure (besides surveys; maybe there will be
some use for them - let's keep them in mind :) ).

There are 3 project member "roles": admin, developer and user.

1. "Admin" manages requests to join the project and maintains the GRASS
project at GForge. Currently there are 2 admins: I and Bernard Reiter.

2. "Developer" can do most of the things that admin can. Only that he
doesn't have his duties and he can't remove the whole GRASS project.
But he still can add/modify/delete trackers as well as delete tickets
for good. It was neccessary to provide that much power to "developers"
so that they could move tickets between the trackers. "Developers" -
please use your power wisely and drop me a line before doing something
more intrusive you are not sure about :).

3. "User" can open new tickets in the trackers, reply to other tickets
and "monitor", participate in surveys ("admin" and "developer" can too,
of course).

The former GRASS Request Tracker can be used to examine the previously
resolved issues, and those that were still in progress as the new
system was released [5].

GForge manuals are here: [6].

[1]http://wald.intevation.org/tracker/?group_id=21
[2]http://wald.intevation.org/account/register.php
[3]http://wald.intevation.org/project/request.php?group_id=21
[4]http://grass.itc.it/community/support.php#devellists
[5]http://intevation.de/rt/webrt?q_status=open&q_queue=grass
[6]http://gforge.org/docman/index.php?group_id=1&selected_doc_group_id=5&language_id=1

Maciek