Re: BHS: Bug help system
In my response I talk about 'such websites'. By this, I mean places like
http://master.debian.org/~ajt/oldbugs.html
http://qa.debian.org/bts-help.html
RC bug list, ...
On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 20:11, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 06:50:15PM +0000, Mark Howard wrote:
> [snip]
> > - Maintainers have different skills and resources.
>
> I dunno, I've been triaging a lot of bugs which are not my own
This is great. One of the main problems though is that this is not done
by enough people. I know I haven't been looking at such websites
regularly. These are the reasons:
1) not remembering - a weekly email would really help with this. Bring
the requests for help to me, don't make me go find them.
2) Those lists tend to be full of old complicated bugs which I know
nothing about. They are there for a long time - I have to look through
them ever time I visit the page. Having them automatically removed after
X days would make sure that none of my time reading the reports was
wasted. The maintainers would also be forced into looking at other means
(such as writing to a mailing list, where the argument could be made
longer and more people would take notice.
3) Different skills. I know nothing about python, but a little about
perl. When I look at the lists I see everything - I have to do work to
discover such things. I would be more motivated to help if I was
presented with a list targetted towards my skills.
> While I *have* used the help tag on my own bugs, you're right in that
> people usually don't notice them. But just sending a little note to -devel
> afterwards usually works.
For trivial bugs where you don't really need help, but it would be quite
nice (for example, creating pts icons for galeon), most people would not
want to send a message to -devel. One of the main reasons is that it
might annoy lots of people who are completely uninterested in the topic.
> > - Maintainers have real lives.
> Propose something better, then.
The idea was that they would ask for more help when they are very busy
and help out more with other packages when they are not. Perhaps this
wasn't a brilliant argument.
> > - New Maintainers
> Good idea.
..
. I think we need
> some NM's who are just interested to fix bugs in existing packages, rather
> than introduce new packages.
Personally I think one of the requirements of the NM process should be
to fix bugs in other peoples packages. But I guess that's for a
different thread.
> > I think we can help the situation by writing a system for tracking
> > requests for help.
> How is this different from sending a request for help to -devel (or
> other appropriate forums)?
...
> http://qa.debian.org/bts-help.html
My proposal would send reports based on their group. The maintainer
would know that everyone who finds out about the bug report would know
about (gtk programming/...) and would have an interest in fixing bugs.
Therefore, the maintainer would not worry about sending a report to this
place.
As for the bts-help page, see my above comment about trawling though
reports which are too difficult for you to fix, or require a skill you
don't have.
[snip]
> Why not ask a mailing list first?
When you send an email to -devel, it is sent to 2000 people who are
generally interested in Debian development. In many cases, the bug
report would not be important enough to bother so many people,
especially since many of them would not be interested. This is like
saying why tag a bug help?
--
.''`. Mark Howard
: :' :
`. `' http://www.tildemh.com
`- mh@debian.org | mh@tildemh.com | mh344@cam.ac.uk
Reply to: