Dreaming about cooperation with upstream [Was: Re: Upstream error reporting]
On 2008-03-19, 22:51 GMT, Philip Ashmore wrote:
I just filed
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=438269
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a policy in place for Fedora to
be the "point of contact" for upstream bug reports so that
those wishing to improve the Fedora experience don't have to create
multiple accounts with multiple upstream sources in order to report a bug?
yeah, life sucks. Sometimes.
and our tools are pitiful. Quite often.
In my ideal world, the workflow would be like this.
1) You as a reporter file a bug in Fedora bugzilla and that would
be mostly end of the story for you (barring some NEEDINFOs) --
then you should just sit, relax and watch programmers to fix
the bug.
2) Bug triager and/or developer finds out that this is not a bug
in the distro packaging, configuration, etc., and in the same
time it is not time-sensitive, security, super-important bug,
so that it should be fixed upstream.
She clicks the button "UPSTREAM" and that is for some time the
end of the story for her (unless, which is quite often the
case, he is also working at upstream, so he can deal with the
bug there).
3) Our bugzilla collects all information from the bug itself, and
from other sources (fixing backtraces with our debuginfos,
providing versions of the packages in question, default
configuration, etc.) and files (via XML-RPC or something like
that) a bug in the upstream database.
4) Upstream bug triagers/developers check that the bug is not
duplicate, and do other necessary diaper-changing for the new
bug.
Upstream developers when working on the resolving the issue,
could file a NEEDINFO, which would be automagically sent to
our bugzilla, and from that to you as a NEEDINFO from our
bugzilla. Your reply would go other way around, of course. You
are not logged in to the upstream bugzilla, nor you have an
account there.
On every step (or every comment?) the upstream bugzilla sends
some information to our bugzilla, so we (you as a reporter and
our developers) can follow the progress of the bug.
5) Finally, when the bug is closed upstream, our package
maintainer (or all package maintainers of distributions
collaboratin with that particular upstream?) get a message
(through our bugzilla of course, so that it is logged) that
the issue was resolved and she should make an updated package
for our distro.
6) When it is done, our bug closes (with possible QA, Errata
process, etc. as usual).
Unfortunately, so far this is just a pipedream and from point 2)
to 5) it doesn't exist at all.
Unfortunately, there is a huge value for developer to have actual
real reporter (and not a fake one like Fedora bug triager)
available. Upstream reporter may need some information, he will
certainly need at least one attempt to reproduce the bug with his
fix included (which in turn may require cooperation of the
downstream package maintainer; what a mess :-(), he may (and he
probbaly will) find out that some assumption original reporter,
and bug triager had on their minds when filing the upstream bug
were wrong, etc.
Therefore in the ideal world with the current very non-ideal
tooling I would love every our reporter, made an account upstream
and file the bug there (and let me know the number of the
upstream bug), unfortunately it is obviously too harsh for many
reporters, so we are muddling through the current mess as best as
we can.
Best,
Matěj