[Mapserver-dev] Bug status needs attention

[Frank Warmerdam]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> I agree that we could try to make better use of bugzilla, but 
> unfortunately I don't think it's as simple as marking all bugs accepted 
> or unconfirmed. To me, accepting a bug means that you are working on it, 
> but in real life we do not always have time to act on all bugs (hence 
> the longlist of open bugs). So are we better with a bunch of "new" bugs 
> or a bunch of "accpeted" bugs that are not being taken care of?

Daniel,

My thinking has always been that I should quickly review the bug when
I first receive it.  At that point I might ask for more information or
even just add a note saying I don't think I will get to it for a long
time.  But if the bug looks reasonably well documented and something I
would like to deal with I will accept it - even if it might be months
till I return to finally solve it.

> I would tend to think that it's better to leave a bug in NEW state if we 
> don't have time to act on it, this way it's still clearly up for grabs 
> if another developer with the right skills/knowledge combination wants 
> to fix it.

Generally speaking I don't go looking for NEW bugs to work on - perhaps
others do.  But if a bug becomes important to me and the "owner" hasn't
fixed it promptly I would just write into the bug that I would like to take
it.

> What I've been doing personally is setting the "target milestone" to 4.4 
> on bugs that I want to get back to before 4.4. That's how I would query 
> for important bugs for 4.4, any of my bugs that doesn't have its target 
> milestone set is either not going to make it in any specific release, or 
> simply hasn't been classed yet. Perhaps we could create a "later" target 
> milestone to be used for bugs that are likely valid, but that we don't 
> know when we'll be able to act on them. This way we could use the target 
> milestone for querying open bugs.

I think that Sean and many users may feel frustrated about bugs that they
write up and that never get any reply, are never accepted, etc.  It is
very hard to judge if the bug has even been seen by anyone.

Of course, with a release pending I imagine you (as release manager) will now
feel obligated to go through all the open bug reports and try to classify them
and/or prompt some action.   Thats a thankless job. :-)

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent