Re: Reduced Bugzilla functionality for 6+ months -- acceptable?

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

Hi Max,

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Max Kanat-Alexander <mkanat bugzilla org> wrote:
>        Hey folks. I'm Max, from the Bugzilla Project. I also have a
> company called Everything Solved, and we'd be the ones doing the
> upgrade work if it happens.

This is great news.  :-)

>        All the attachment status stuff will still be there. The fact
> that they *show up* in the attachment table will probably even be there.
> They haven't ever been *changeable* from show_bug.cgi, as far as I
> could see in the code.

They are readily changeable in show_bug.cgi in Gnome's customized
version of bugzilla.  (See
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135697; note that the status
column in the attachment table changes from text to a drop-down combo
box when logged in with appropriate privileges so we might need to
hand you some of those first).  Not being able to change patch
statuses there all in one go, as would be the case with stock upstream
bugzilla right now, would be a big loss.  In my opinion, anyway.

>        As far as collaboration goes, we're always looking for new
> contractors (that is, we're willing to pay people who are good
> Bugzilla developers to help us out on the project), but there is a
> definite code quality concern. I will be reviewing everything, and so
> somebody has to be able to demonstrate that they can produce
> high-quality Bugzilla code quickly, or they're going to be spending
> more of my time than they're saving.
>
>        As far as upstreaming goes, I think we'd all like that, but
> that's up to the funder, not me. If anybody else would like to fund
> upstreaming, that would work, too. Or anybody is free to take the
> patches that we create (which will be under the Mozilla Public License)
> and attempt to upstream them, themselves--that's fine, too.
>
>        From the feedback, it sounds like the most important items to
> bring back immediately after we have an upgraded bugzilla.gnome.org are:
>
>        1. Canned responses
>        2. simple-dup-finder
>        3. Patch and keyword emblems
>        4. NEEDINFO asking
>        5. show_bug re-ordering
>        6. Other layout modifications
>
>        And then the other features after that.
>
>        Is that right?

Those may be first, but I think it's also important to explicitly list
the following:

* patch review statuses editable from show_bug.cgi.  This was
mentioned by Olav, Cosimo, Matthias already, and is important to me.
IIRC, this feature originated as a developer request from Mark
McLoughlin to streamline an otherwise quite slow process, and has been
a hit with many developers ever since.

* boogle replacement + product pages (mentioned by Olav and Matthias;
I'd also list it as the thing most important to me.)  See
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=pango for an example;
note that some items change depending on whether you're logged in,
though most of the page is the same either way.  This page provides
lots of information at a glance and provides all kinds of links to
make it easy to dig deeper about a module.  It also serves a nice UI
discoverability purpose: teaching users how to form quick useful
searches (click on various non-underlined links in the page)

* describeuser.cgi webpage (mentioned by both Olav and Cosimo; only
viewable if you're logged in).  Gnome Bugzilla puts quite a bit of
useful information on this page, such as which modules the user
maintains, which modules the user is interested in (i.e. which
modules' -maint aliases the user has elected to watch), which bugs and
patches they've filed (all with lots of useful links), etc.

* some system of user identification.  Currently, this is done in
Gnome bugzilla by specifying whether particular users are the
maintainer of the given module, a developer of some gnome module, how
active the given user has been in gnome bugzilla (the points system),
and links to the describeuser.cgi webpage.  Each small piece of this
almost seems trivial, but the net effect really adds up.  Think of it
as some kind of rudimentary combination of online trust system and
social networking.


I agree it's probably more important to get the upgrade done and
running than to get all the features in, but I wanted to provide some
perspective on some of these other important features.


Elijah