Maintainer preferred method of blocker bug notification?
Hi,
At a recent QA meeting I raised the idea of a better way for
maintainers to find out when their package is a release blocking bug.
Better is vaguely defined by me as: not email based, and not adamw
based (Adam Williamson is in fact a person not a bot).
Currently, the ways a maintainer finds out a bug is release blocking:
1. Bugzilla email. When QA determines a bug is a blocker, it's noted
in the bug as a comment, and bugzilla emails (most) everyone on the
cc.
The problem with email is self-explanatory. If the bugzilla
notification email isn't being registered in a useful way, probably
more emails won't help either.
2. The very nifty Fedora Blocker Bug Tracking app
https://qa.fedoraproject.org/blockerbugs/
The problem with this is, it's passive. You need to check it. So it's
mainly used by QA folks to get a bird's eye view of the status of
blocker bugs, and freeze exceptions.
3. The illustrious, humorous, verbose, would have been cloned by now
were it affordable and timely enough, adamw, who sends out an email
summary of blocking bugs to devel@.
Problem, more email.
4. Adamw (or less often another human within QA) takes it upon
themselves to inquire via IRC. These are effective. Unknown is if
slips would have resulted if they didn't happen. But it seems at least
plausible that it would increase slips without this form of nagging
(reminding).
The problem is, I think it's inappropriate for any one person to have
to nag other people about their bugs. It's also tedious and manual.
The time and interest for any QA person to do this is low.
The questions then, are:
- Have we reached the pinnacle notification method of blocker bugs to
maintainers? Or is there a better way to do this?
- Would it help to have a nagbot (or enhance zodbot) to ping
maintainers on IRC? Is the nagbot more or less likely to be ignored,
or would it be about the same? Of course there are lower level
questions about whether it's possible, what work it entails, would it
be opt in or opt out, could notifications happen outside IRC, but for
now I think the "in general" high level context is more useful.
--
Chris Murphy