[anjuta-devel] Commits and Bugzilla bugs: A modest proposal

[James Liggett <jrliggett cox net>]

Hi all,
During the 3.8 cycle we had a very large number of Bugzilla bugs
resolved. With major releases, it's been a common practice  to highlight
resolved Bugzilla issues in our NEWS file so people know what was fixed
in a release. But, when a bug number is buried within a commit message,
it can be very hard to find commits that are associated with bug reports
in a log. To make life a bit easier, could everyone please put the
notation bgo #[bug number] in the commit subject line so that I can grep
the shortlog for it? A commit that does this would look like this:

libanjuta: bgo #693916 - Avoid the name Anjuta in libanjuta messages

If you look at the NEWS file for 3.8.0, you'll notice there's only about
15 or so bugs listed in the "Bugs fixed" section, when the true number
is closer to 40 or 50. I didn't list them all because doing so would
require me to look at every commit by hand and in many cases search for
the bug to find its summary. Having to do that for this last release
would have taken me all day, so I ended up not mentioning many good bug
fixes in NEWS.

Making sure to list the bug number using the bgo notation will:

1. Make it easier for me to figure out which bugs were closed during a
release.

2. Let our users know if a release fixes an issue they're having

3. Call attention to your good work, giving you, the developers that
make Anjuta the great program that it is, the recognition you deserve.

3.8 was a great cycle for us -- we had lots of fixes and Anjuta is a lot
better because of your hard work. This policy change will help me write
more usable NEWS files that give readers more information about fixed
bugs and give developers credit for their work, no matter how small it is.

Thanks,
James