Re: G2 Lessons Learned

[Eric Baudais <baudais kkpsi org>]

On Mon, 2002-07-01 at 21:20, Kevin Breit wrote:
> Hey guys,
>     I know that I have been dormant lately, and my appologies for that.
> Between my discovery of my girlfriend, school, and a slight task change at
> Ximian, I have been unable to easily participate.
>     However, I am going to make my suggestion regarding the DocTable known.
> I'll get looked at weird, but please bare with me.
>     I don't really think we need it.  Seriously guys!  To me, it seems like
> it's a duplication of something else: Bugzilla.
>     I am sure we're all quite firmilar (fond or not) of Bugzilla.  I feel
> though, that it provides everything that we'll need and more to do what the
> DocTable does.  I propose that we abolish the DocTable and replace it with
> more fine grained tasks in Bugzilla.  We can point a new user to Bugzilla
> and say "Find a project that has open bugs for documentation".  This is, if
> nothing else, more precise than the DocTable can get (without reinventing
> the wheel again).  It would also serve as a task management system, to help
> organize each developer, and the entire GDP as a whole.

The main problem with using bugzilla is that not all the apps we write
documentation for are in bugzilla.  Also some of the core GNOME apps
started out as third party apps and with a lot of developer work and
good docs they became a core GNOME app.  I'm mainly thinking of gedit
here.  

Another problem with bugzilla is there isn't an easy way to view all the
apps which don't have documentation.  I have run against opposition for
writing bug reports for docs when the docs aren't written and/or there
is not help button in the app.  Also we'd have to keep track of multiple
bug trackers too.  Ximian has a bug tracker and any other third party
software we write docs for have to be tracked independently.

The last problem is there will have to be a lot of setup for the
bugzilla maintainers.  We would also need to put an entry for the
gnome-user-docs package and a documentation documentation section for
every app.  If we thought this was a good idea then it would have to go
past Luis the QA guy.  I just see hackers throwing a fit when a bug is
closed when the documentation is added and another bug opened for
editing of the doc.

I think it makes sense to have an independent documentation management
system.  This way we can track any docs the GDP writes.  The system
would also be a good place to suggest third party apps which need docs. 
We can easily check the status and authors of docs for any apps.  I just
feel bugzilla will not let new contributors see which apps need
documenting, editing, maintaining, etc.

Eric Baudais