debbugs: assign someone from a group of willing people to fix a bug
Package: debbugs
Version: 2.3-4
Severity: wishlist
Hi,
Ever notived how many bugs there are? How many don't get fixed, get
ignored, get forgotten? A lot of bugs are years old and might not even
exist anymore.
I know (most :) maintainers do their best to fix bugs but sometimes
there just isn't enough time or will. Or the problem is hard to
reproduce. Maintainers might also not have the same architecture or
setup as the reportie of a bug.
What to do?
I would like to propose a setup similar to the one used to translate
package descriptions:
If a bug is not delt with for some time (no mails or status changes
indication work being done) a person is selected out of a pool of
willing persons and is mailed the bug. He can then check out the bug
and fix it if possible and has the right to do an NMU or close the bug
etc.
If nothing happens to the bug or if the person sends a reject for the
bug another person gets drafted and so on.
Some comands could be introduced to control what persons gets the bug
next. Like selecting the architecture or some capabilities of the
person to be drafted next. Also maintainers should be able to force or
stop drafting someone, so e.g. if a maintainer things its an alpha
related problem he can tell the BTS to restrict the bug to people
having an alpha and draft someone immediatly (without some lengthy
wait for the drafting to kick in).
The easiest way might be to allways draft someone but draft the
maintainer first. If he doesn't react, say within a month, the next
person is drafted from the pool.
Criteria for drafting someone from the pool should be primary
workload. Take the person with the lowest number of bugs assigned.
Additionally factors like architecture, dist
(stable/testing/unstable), kernel should be matched to the bug
reportie if possible. Capabilities like knowing perl or C or favorisms
like loving games could also be considered.
When starting there should probably be a limit of a few bugs per
person, otherwise all tousands of open bugs wouldbe reassigned to a
few then soon unwilling helpers.
Any comment? Maybe something more than "send patch and we think about
it"?
May the Source be with you.
Goswin
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux dual 2.4.16 #19 SMP Sat Jul 6 04:37:14 CEST 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE
Versions of packages debbugs depends on:
ii ed 0.2-19 The classic unix line editor
ii exim [mail-transport-agent] 3.35-1 An MTA (Mail Transport Agent)
ii libmailtools-perl [mailtools] 1.48-1 Manipulate email in perl programs
ii perl [perl5] 5.6.1-7 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction
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