reporting bugs upstream : nothing on the wiki?

[Ankur Sinha]

On Tue, 2010-07-13 at 12:27 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> On 07/13/2010 08:36 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
> > This is an interesting idea. I don't think the maintainers themselves
> > would have the time to do this. Can this be passed on to the mentors, to
> > pass on as an activity for new Ambassadors ;) ? They'll learn too in the
> > process, and might end up co-maintaining some packages (which is a good
> > thing!). It would be a good idea to have as many people as possible
> > exposed to the bug reporting process. Starting with new Ambassadors is
> > some what going down to the roots. Comments?

> Here again you continue to suggest we should pass the job of what falls 
> under the packager duty to someone else in the community because they 
> are to incompetent to accept the responsibility and full fill their role 
> as a packager/maintainer.
> 

It is the responsibility of the maintainer but no where does it mention
that he cannot take help from people to do it. Modularising his tasks so
that more folks can pitch in doesn't sound like incompetence to me. 

> It falls under packagers responsibility to be the bridge between 
> upstream and Fedora.
> 

Responsibility can certainly be shared. That's how a community
functions. "You can't do this? okay, I got some time on my hands I'll
take care of it". 

We don't go around yelling "It's your damn job! DO IT" ;)

> Packagers/maintainers already have upstream bugzilla account and are 
> subscripted to various mailing list related to the component they ship.
> 
> > Generic instructions for this are available everywhere. This is simple
> > and hardly takes a minute. (I don't know how many bugzillas I've joined
> > up already)
> >
> 
> Dont make the assumption that every reporter has the same time, skills 
> and patience as you.
> 

I'm not making assumptions here. Bugzillas are designed to be easy to
use for new reporters (at least that's the way I think of them). I'm
sure upstream will not use "a bugzilla that takes several hours to file
a bug report."

> We need to nurture the newcomers not the experience once.
> 
> The new reporter gradually will get the experience and even start to 
> work directly with upstream if the first step is as little as possible.
> 
> If it takes him several hours to file a single bug report then that step 
> is to steep and we lose a potential report from our community.
> 
> Redirecting that reporter upstream seriously complicates that first step.
> 
> > Don't we have a policy of staying close to upstream? Are there a lot of
> > differences in the upstream package and what fedora ships? I maintain a
> > few packages, and they're all same as the upstream source. (just
> > curious)
> >
> > This depends on the bug and cannot be generalized. Bugs that are
> > reproducible on all machines will not require this. Upstream will handle
> > those (I'm sure they'll be happy to do it themselves than wait for the
> > reporter to get back to them , if ever). Machine specific bugs have no
> > other solution. If upstream can't reproduce it, it has to rely on the
> > reporter for feedback. The maintainer can't do much too here.
> >
> > Upstreams interested in getting good bug reports do keep a good
> > documentation of how to go about it. If they don't, we can't do much,
> > it's really their loss. What I'm saying is that we encourage users to go
> > all the way to upstream and report bugs rather than stopping at our
> > bugzilla. As Jóhann already mentioned, rather forcefully, this is a
> > difficult to achieve goal. Even partially achieving it would be an
> > improvement IMO
> 
> This is a goal we should not waste time and resource trying to achieve.

You haven't given a single valid reason "why" :)

> 
> Reporters themselves will find their way upstream if they care enough 
> about the component in question and when they are ready to do so.
> 

Reporters are sometimes not even aware of upstream bugzillas.
Redirecting them is a way of telling them "there's a faster way to get
your bug fixed which will do everyone good"

No body is saying that the responsibility to file bugs upstream (or
bridge the gap) should be passed on to the reporter. But it would be
nice to have the bug filing docs mention that the reporter could file
the bug upstream to get it fixed quicker, and that if they have trouble
doing it, they can always file it on the Fedora bugzilla and the
maintainer/triager will take care of it.

regards,
Ankur