Reminder: Bugzilla patch report and My Bugs page



Hi all,

We as a project have a problem with good patches getting lost in
Bugzilla.

Bugzilla has a patch report feature, accessible via the sidebar at http
s://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=browse.html which is itself
accessible via the Browse button in the heading of Bugzilla. (If you
don't want to fiddle with the combo box to select the right product,
you can first visit any bug in that product, then click Browse.)

Maintainers, please try to minimize the number of patches in the
unreviewed or accepted-commit-* states for your product. It's very
common that maintainers forget about patches due to lack of immediate
time to review, or patches may be accepted but never committed. When
this happens, new contributors get discouraged and leave the project.
Please, periodically review your patch tracker (e.g. once per month) to
make sure this isn't the case for your module.

For example (I will arbitrary pick on gnome-weather here only because
it is very typical):

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=patchreport.html&product=gnome-w
eather&patch-status=accepted-commit_now (bit-rotten, still marked as
accepted)

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=patchreport.html&product=gnome-w
eather&patch-status=none (several small/easy patches, forgotten)

If a patch has bit-rotten, please set its attachment status to
Obsolete, or give it the status Reviewed, to remove it from these
trackers.

Reviewing patches is a time commitment, but I suspect the primary
problem here is simply that patches get forgotten. I doubt patches
would go uncommitted or unreviewed for so long if maintainers were
checking the patch tracker periodically.

***

There are two sides to this problem. Please also periodically check
your My Bugs page https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=describeuser.h
tml for unreviewed or accepted patches. Please don't let them sit in
the unreviewed state forever; if a patch is unreviewed for more than a
couple of weeks, please leave a reminder comment. If the maintainer is
unresponsive despite the reminder comment, consider whether you're
comfortable pushing the patch unreviewed, especially for small or
important bugfixes, or finding a more experienced GNOME developer to do
so for you. (Maintainers, please actively review and reject patches to
avoid this situation as much as possible.)

Michael


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