Re: more bug tracker improvements

Mark Wiesemann wrote: > Gregory Beaver wrote: > >> I'd like to hear how this works for you who are doing the bug reporting. >> Is this easier? Our goal is to make it very easy to report bugs and to >> assign proper credit to people who have provided fixes, and at the same >> time very hard to spam. > > IMHO credits belong into the changelog, not somewhere hidden in a bug > report. This is also something that people often complain about after > new PHP releases are available. In those changelogs the same thing can > be seen as for example as in the last changelog for pearweb 1.10.1: The > names of the persons who changed something are mentioned, but not the > people who reported the issue (or the improvement). But if John Miller > (just a random name) provides a patch for e.g. a major bug, then his > name should be mentioned there, not the name of the PEAR developer who > applied the patch. > > IMHO it is self-evident that each of the developers that are listed in > the release announcement mail has worked on the package. If that's not > the case, mark this person as inactive and the name won't appear in the > list in the email anymore. And whether person A or B has fixed bug #0815 > or #4711 is IMHO not really interesting. And if it is interesting for > somebody, people can lookup that name in the bug tracker or in the CVS > web viewer. > > Comments are welcome, of course. Hi Mark, It makes me a bit sad to see both the implied mistrust in your message and the problem in the changelog of 1.10.1. One of the main purposes behind adding the package.xml generator for roadmap, requiring pear.php.net accounts for opening bugs and so on is to provide a technical way to implement proper crediting. If you feel that this is not providing enough, a patch or fleshed-out idea would be very appreciated. The changelog notes generated by the roadmap at pear.php.net lists a bug fixer based on the "Assigned" field. In the case of pearweb 1.10.1, after investigating, I did find a few bugs were not assigned to the person who provided the fixing patch. The truth is that this is not a technology problem, but a political one. If the fixing developer doesn't assign the bug to the account who provided the fix, there's no way to enforce this. I would not have released before changing credit had I figured this out in advance. As for suggesting that developers who fix bugs should not be listed next to the bug that they fix, this seems to be a double standard. Why are the people actually taking the trouble to apply fixes, verify that they work and don't introduce regressions, close the bug, update package.xml and other work any less important than someone who opens a bug with a 2-line patch? Either everyone or no one should be credited. Interestingly, Subversion takes the "no one" approach, even forbidding names in the source files. Your message is especially frustrating to me personally because this is the first update to the website in years that was truly the work of a team, and the changelog has credit for every fixed bug, which I thought was a great step forward. To then hear that the credit was improperly given is really annoying. I'm also certain that this was all done in good faith with no attempt to grandstand or grab ego, which makes it even more frustrating. Please, let's try to avoid both the insinuation of intentional mis-crediting and the accidental mis-crediting that prompts it. PEAR as a project has had a long enough history of mistrust and of good reasons to mistrust, this stops now. Thanks, Greg