Re: Using Bugzilla for freeze break requests?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2011-09-22 at 21:24 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-09-22 at 22:44 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > I think that, at the very least for GNOME 3.4 onwards, we should switch
> > to using a keyword in bugzilla, and the release-team, docs team and i18n
> > teams can monitor newly request breaks, through RSS feeds (the design
> > team does that), and get the keywords cleared when the freeze break has
> > a result.
> 
> If I don't get email notifications, I can pretty much guarantee I won't
> deal with it promptly. I don't think you can subscribe to keywords in
> Bugzilla to get emails when bugs are tagged.
> 
> I understand we'd get better tracking, but using Bugzilla is a lot more
> work than sending an email. I gave a docs ack for one UI freeze break
> request while on vacation from my phone. Using Bugzilla on a phone is
> unpleasant.
> 
> Bugzilla is great for making sure stuff doesn't get lost. Do we have
> a real problem of requests getting lost?

Sorry, slight thread hijack, but related. What we do actually have a
problem with is not getting notifications for things. I just wasted
an hour because I was still testing against 3.1.91 and didn't get a
notification for this:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649452

That affects three pages in the help. It was made after the UI freeze,
and well after the UI change announcement period. The reason we have
these things is so that people can start writing about the unstable
releases and not have to worry about being wrong.

I don't mean to pick on you personally, Bastien. It's pretty obvious
what a string change is, but I think a lot of developers don't have
a clear sense of what a UI change is.

So, if we use Bugzilla for this stuff:

1) How do pre-freeze notifications fit in? Add the keyword or flag
but don't wait for approval?

2) How can we improve developer awareness of UI changes? The banner
at the top of Bugzilla could help:

  We're in the UI change announcement period. Does this affect
  the UI or interaction in any way? If so, ...

But I'd still really love to see emails going to gnome-doc-list.

--
Shaun