Re: [DotGNU]Pnet Bug tracking and categories

[Rhys Weatherley]

On Tuesday 04 March 2003 05:40 am, James Michael DuPont wrote:

> Currently, I am working on trying to fix some bugs,
> but they are not assigned to me. I hear that they are assigned to
> someone else, but I cannot see that.

As far as I'm aware, there are no open bugs currently assigned to you.  There 
are bugs that you have entered, which you will be notified of automatically 
as changes occur to them.

> Also, some of my bugs are being closed, before they are resolved.
> I dont mind if you say, Severity is minimal, resolution is deferr, but
> to just close them, that is not fair.

I am the designated project leader.  As such, I have to close bugs that have 
been dealt with because they have are (a) fixed, (b) judged not to be 
important at this time, and (c) are inadequately specified and hence cannot 
be dealt with in the current form.

You may disagree with my decisions sometimes, but attacking me in the bug 
description, and then via private e-mail, and then again in this public forum 
is not likely to change my decision.

Perhaps you are entering bugs that you yourself want to work on.  In that 
case, it is pointless to enter the bug.  Work on the problem, and submit a 
patch through the Patch Manager when you are done.  I don't need to know 
about problems that I'm not expected to fix.

> Savannah has the abilty to store lots more information about a bug that
> are not being used properly right now : Category ,Severity ,Resolution,

I can turn these on, but there is a problem.  If the person who enters the bug 
doesn't use them, then the fields end up with meaningless values.  In the 
previous Tech Support section, I did have various categories, but they went 
unused.

Besides, I ignore all bug fields except the description.  "Severity" reflects 
how angry the person entering the bug was, not its true importance when 
considered calmly next to the rest of the bugs.  Let's say I down-graded a 
severity value on one of your bugs.  I'm sure you'd flame me for doing so, 
even if it was a calmly made decision.

"Category" reflects where the bug occurred (compiler, runtime, etc), which is 
normally obvious from the bug description, or is wrong because the user 
thought it was in one category (e.g. ilasm) but it was really somewhere else 
(e.g. ildasm).

"Resolution" is already being used properly.  It is set to "Fixed" when a 
problem is resolved, or "Invalid"/"Wont Fix" for issues that will not be 
fixed for various reasons.

> "Assigned to" is only being used a little, it needs to be used more
> often. If I want to help out, I should be able to assign a bug to
> myself that is not assigned. Then others can see that am working on ti.

You can always add a comment along the lines of "I am working on this".  I 
will note however that every time that you have done this, weeks have gone by 
and the bug has still not been fixed by you.  Or you've dumped pages and 
pages of stack traces and debug code into the bug description which don't 
actually help anyone find the problem in question - they are just your own 
personal thoughts, which are inappropriate for bugs and patches.

And then you complain that I've closed the bug because it has got to the point 
of being useless at describing the real problem!  Arrgghh!!

Cheers,

Rhys.