[Scons-dev] Bugtracker and stuff...

[Gary Oberbrunner]

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Dirk Bächle <tshortik at gmx.de> wrote:

> On 04.05.2014 14:29, Gary Oberbrunner wrote:

>>

>> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 7:38 AM, Dirk Bächle <tshortik at gmx.de> wrote:

>>>

>>> [...]

>>

>> This is a great start.  Thanks for doing it!  My preference would be a

>> hosted bugtracker though, just because it's one less thing to manage

>> (keep patched, ensure uptime etc.).  Also, a minor point, but people

>> may have more familiarity with the big hosted ones.

>

> On the other hand, roundup is used by python.org and openhatch.org...which

> is where some new contributors might come from in the future.


Ah, didn't know that.  That helps make the decision.  I just looked at
the python.org tracker and the bug pages are pretty easy to read.  The
search page is ugly but functional (much more so than ours).  And I
like the "languishing" status idea.


>> Now, that said, I

>> don't really have much experience with any of them that I like.  So if

>> roundup is nice, hosting it ourselves wouldn't be all that terrible.

>> I'm pretty sure Pair, our current host, can do mod_python.

>

> Maybe it would be worth the try to setup a demo instance of "roundup". We

> could run it in some kind of "read-only mode", updating its data from the

> Tigris tracker time to time.


This should be pretty easy I think, presuming its dependencies are not
too onerous.  Dirk, do you have access to the web server?  If not, I
can get you access (send me your ssh pub key off-list) or I can try to
set up the demo.  (Note that we do NOT have root access on our server,
but many tools work with locally-installed dependencies these days.)


> Just to get a better feeling for the tool...although I'm pretty sure that it

> beats Tigris' Issuezilla easily.

> I mean, we can't list all of our bugs/issues currently...because we have

> more than 500 entries? Were not in the 80s anymore. ;)


Yeah, seriously.  Along with that I really hate the Tigris bug-tracker
interface.  It is so needlessly complicated and hard to work with.
It's not even easy to _find_ it from the main tigris project page.


>> Ideally we'd have a stable tracker so we could put bug links into

>> commit messages, and mailing lists, and they'd still work 10 years

>> from now.  But that may be an impossible dream. :-)

>>

>> As for #2739, I see I was involved in that.  I tried to get the OP to

>> write a test but that apparently was pushing a little too hard for him

>> at the time.  I guess I should take it.  The batch-mode fixes in there

>> are quite valuable.

>

>

> We have a lot of good patches and enhancements pending in the issue list,

> and my impression is that they've been rotting there much too long now. With

> a better overview this wouldn't have happened...but it's probably also the

> communication from the BugParties that's missing and playing a role here.


Yes, you're right about that too.  My impression is that we're doing
OK handling pull requests, so we're getting good input from the
community there, but we're falling even further behind on bug triage.
Bug parties are definitely part of that.  Who knows, a more attractive
and easy-to-use tracker might well make it easy enough to triage that
we could make more progress with the limited amount of person-hours we
have.

-- 
Gary