final thoughts - bug tracking system

Sat Sep 17 06:07:37 PDT 2005

Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai wrote:
I've used JIRA in production before and it's just nice. I think that
if Java will run on DragonFly, there's no reason to not use it. Even
if it requires running a non-DragonFly machine, I think the features
it provides are very worthwhile.
What's the importance of "self-hosting" or "closed-sourceness of BTS"?
Aren't these non-issues?
They aren't non-issues.  However, given how our own website looks the Jira
front-end will be a welcome relief to people (and no, I don't think our
website framework invites one to hack on it, sorry).
I don't understand what you try to say with that.  As a note, I consider 
self-hosting as quite a requirement [1], but not extra-strict.  At the 
very least it showed us that java doesn't work as expected and we need 
to fix that.  I think that's positive.

As another note on the closed source business:

We all develop under BSDL.  Why?  We obviously like it.  We like to 
write real free code.  We *want* companies (maybe our own) to take the 
code, to modify it and to make money out of that.  And we just trust in 
those companies to give us something back:  bug fixes, features, design. 
 That's the basic idea, at least to me.  If I'm wrong here, then I 
maybe should change camps.

So now there is one company, Atlassian, which accepts this offer.  They 
use open source software all over their products.  Hooray, that's what 
makes the BSDL developer's heart beat faster.  And now you don't want to 
take their offer to use this product for free?  Strange message to the 
BSD community:  "We encourage companies to take our code, but if they do 
so we don't want these products because they are not open source."

As I see it, potential reporter'd be interested in whether the bugs are dealt 
with promptly and effectively. Potential developer or sponsor'd like to know 
whether BTS is really helping or hindering (chosen wisely).
Seems the only requirement for a user in Jira to create an issue is to
register.  Basically the same for any bug tracking mechanism nowadays.
If you're talking about my eval install, then this was chosen by me. 
You can as well allow anon entries or require users to be created by admins.

It would as well work to mail to a specific address and get your issue 
registered, without needing an account.  Or you would get an account 
created with the email submission.  Jira is enormously flexible.

http://bugs.gnome.org/simple-bug-guide.cgi is very nice in how it takes and
guides the use through the steps of reporting in a consistent manner.  This
is Gnome's Bugzilla customisation.  That doesn't mean I want use to use
Bugzilla, merely an example for the crowd that thinks Bugzilla is clumsy for
reporting.
Yes I think so.  I still didn't receive the confirmation email and it's 
been more than 15 minutes that I had to register there.  This is 
something what I wouldn't accept.  If I want to report a bug, I want to 
do it quickly.  If these developers don't want me to report it, then I 
won't do it.  I don't need to report the bug after all.

I am tired of this bikeshed.  I am tired af all those fucking bikesheds 
all over.  Why is it like that?  Often enough I have the feeling that 
it's not about the best working solution for the time being, but about 
the eternal optimum.  I just want a bug tracking system.  One which is 
easy to use.  For both users and developers.  I want to be able to post 
followups per mail and not have to use a browser every time.  I want to 
report bugs via mail.  I want to see which bugs are still open and 
search them.  I want it to be easy for the users to search old bug 
reports for issues they might encounter.  And I want such a system as 
soon as possible!

The problem with all those bikesheds is that they delay the 
implementation of the *idea* far too long.  Most of the time people 
agree on the idea (bikeshed), just not on the specific implementation 
(color).  Can't we try to move to a different model:  Implement it the 
way it was proposed unless somebody comes up with a better 
implementation right away.  If not, just do it and change it later to 
the better implementation.  It's extremely discouraging to me if my 
ideas get rolled over and over again by people who just have some 
opinion about it but won't ever come to implement it themselves [no 
offence, general statement].  I believe that most people out there feel 
the same.  This is what cracks up the community.  Let's stop it, please.

Hiten offered to get jira set up.  I offer to set it up and administrate 
it.  If there is somebody out there who can provide a working BTS which 
matches our expectations on what the system should be able to do (we 
didn't even come to discuss these requirements yet!) and who will set it 
up within one week, then PLEASE DO SO.  Otherwise we should go with the 
product available and just switch when we have the optimal solution [2]. 
 No more delays please.  I want to go back to coding, that's the thing 
I actually enjoy.

cheers
  simon
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000012.html
[2] joerg and I offer to migrate the data when we have a better system 
in place

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