Re: Mantis package bombs

[Todd Zullinger]

Charles Curley wrote:
> > You aren't expecting every maintainer to subscribe to user
> lists
> > and follow all the threads here. Do you? Very very few people have
> > the time to do this and mailing lists are not a good place to keep
> > track of bugs which is why bugzilla exists.
>  
>  Yes, as a matter of fact, I do expect them to subscribe to this
>  list. Not because they are maintainers per se, but because
>  presumably they are users as well. It would be a bit difficult to
>  maintain a package without using Fedora. Of course I could be wrong,
>  which would explain the state of the Mantis package. 
But not all users will gain from reading the messages on this list.
Certainly most folks capable of maintaining packages would get bored
reading the many questions by folks that are new users, especially if
they don't have time to help out with answering those questions.

You may well know what the package to maintainer ratio is in Fedora.
If not, it's rather large, with nearly 4700 source packages in the
distro and a little other 400 maintainers.  I don't think it's all
that unreasonable to ask that users help out by reporting bugs to
bugzilla.

I do understand your hesitation of the package seems so full of bugs
that it's pointless.  However, if that doesn't get bugzilla'd, then
other maintainers may not find out for a while that something is
horribly awry in the mantis package and that someone needs some help
(or a smack with the cluestick).  So, a bugzilla may be the most
helpful thing you could do for a terribly broken package, even if it
just says that there are numerous problems (listing them briefly) with
the package and the whole things needs work.

>  As for following every single thread, that's a straw man
> argument.
>  It isn't hard to write a filter to make emails with certain key
>  words (e.g. "mantis") jump out at you. 
Bugzilla has the advantage that it mails the maintain automatically
and that the conversations there are more easily searchable on various
fields.

I think you should view it as a plus that some maintainers do take the
time to follow this list, not as a negative that all of them don't.
And always keep in mind that since the OS and all the work to create
it are given to you for free, it's not that much to ask for you to
report problems in the place that's most accommodating to the
maintainer.  (And I'm not saying that you don't report things to
bugzilla personally.  I know from my own little travels in bugzilla
that isn't true.  :)

>  The fact that I haven't seen any message to the effect of
> "Yeah, I
>  saw that, try this" and only one general "try this list of things to
>  look at" suggests that nobody has the RPM working. 
Or that no one on this list has tried to use it.  How many users are
installing bug trackers?  I think that it's a low number of the folks
on this list.  I haven't seen anyone mentioning Trac here either, but
that doesn't make me think it's broken too. :)

>  Has anyone got the Mantis RPM working? Or have folks done what I
>  did: give up on it and use the upstream tarball? 
I'd read your mails and thought about trying to take a look at getting
the rpm to see what might be broken with it.  I do detest mantis as a
user.  I've hated having to interact with it every time I've reported
a bug to an upstream that used it.  So I figured I'd wait and see if
someone else helped you out before putting myself through some likely
pain. ;-)

>  And another thought, Rahul: maintainers can ignore bugzilla entries
>  same as they can emails. I've had one bug (189120) oustanding since
>  2006-04-17, and no-one has yet taken ownership, never mind actually
>  done anything about it. 
That is certainly true.  Just because someone maintains a package
doesn't mean that they do it well.  Having things in bugzilla though
makes it easier to find those lax maintainers and give them the help
(or kick) that they need.  Other folks can run reports on bugzilla to
find which maintainers have been unresponsive to bugs.  Then, if it's
appropriate, there's the AWOL maintainer process for those folks that
just stop responding to bugs/updates/needed changes in their packages.

(In the case of the above bug, it's also possible that it was fixed in
a newer gnome release and it just didn't get closed properly.  It may
also have gotten lost in the forest of desktop bugs.  It's assigned to
Ray Strode who isn't someone I'd consider a lax maintainer.  He does a
lot of work with upstream gnome projects and within the Fedora desktop
team.  So I'd guess the lack of response there is due to the latter.)

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
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Dawn, n.:
    The time when men of reason go to bed.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"