[Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Aleksey Nogin]

About a year ago there already was a discussion on using Bugzilla for 
tracking OCaml issues/patches. In 
http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200211/msg00275.html Xavier Leroy wrote

>> Would there be any way to get Bugzilla installed at Inria?
> 
> Bugzilla has a reputation of being awfully hard to install.

If this is indeed the main reason for not using Bugzilla, I would be 
willing to host OCaml Bugzilla at http://bugzilla.metaprl.org/ and/or 
help with setting up and configuring Bugzilla on another machine, as 
well as help finding a good way to move the current data over.

The reasons I dislike the current setup and would very much prefer to 
see Bugzilla used for OCaml are numerous:
(a) In current setup, there is no reliable way to post a followup on an 
existing issue. Most of the time when I try doing it, a new entry gets 
created.
(b) There is no easy way to attach files (patches/testcases/etc) to 
existing issues. One can only try to add things inline, but even if that 
works (see (a)), it is ugly and hard to manage.
(c) There is no easy "CC" list that one can subscribe to in order to get 
notified when something happens to a particular entry.
(d) The search function is very primitive
(e) As an "outsider", I feel like I am getting very little feedback on 
the things I submit (when they jut sit there and I do not know what is 
going on), Bugzilla's "NEW/ASSIGNED/REOPENED/RESOLVED/etc" bug status 
classification (together with an "assigned to" field!) does not require 
much more from the developers, but (in my experience) gives much better 
feedback to the reporters.
(f) Entries do not have permanent URLs. Every time an entry is 
re-classified (for example, when it is moved out of "incoming"), the URL 
changes. This means that I can not just point people to an entry 
directly, but instead they have to go through several steps to get there.

In short, I feel that having Bugzilla has a potential to enable me to be 
a better contributor to OCaml. Of course, I have no idea whether this is 
something OCaml team needs or wants.

-- 
Aleksey Nogin

Home Page: http://nogin.org/
E-Mail: nogin@cs.caltech.edu (office), aleksey@nogin.org (personal)
Office: Jorgensen 70, tel: (626) 395-2907

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help settingup.

[Blair Zajac]

Aleksey Nogin wrote:
> 
> About a year ago there already was a discussion on using Bugzilla for
> tracking OCaml issues/patches. In
> http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200211/msg00275.html Xavier Leroy wrote
> 
> >> Would there be any way to get Bugzilla installed at Inria?
> >
> > Bugzilla has a reputation of being awfully hard to install.
> 
> If this is indeed the main reason for not using Bugzilla, I would be
> willing to host OCaml Bugzilla at http://bugzilla.metaprl.org/ and/or
> help with setting up and configuring Bugzilla on another machine, as
> well as help finding a good way to move the current data over.

Well, as the author of referenced link, I'm all for this :)  Must
be the Caltech background (I'm an alum).

However, some questions that I think may be relavent this being
used as a core Ocaml development tool.

How many people would manage this system?
Would it be just you?
What happens if you get tired of managing the bugzilla system?

For this to be considered, I think there'd have to be a way of
showing the longevity of the bugzilla repository.  No point of
putting effort into a bug repository to see it disappear later.

Which leads me to this thought:

It may be good to have a team of people that could manage this box.

There are a number of people setting up different resources on
the Internet for Ocaml (me for Mailman for ocaml-pxp and ocaml-i18n,
Gerd for Godi).  Most of the time its a single developer.  If
something happens to that person (loss of interest, lack of time,
etc), then the resource becomes stagnant, is hard to move to a new
site.

It would be good if there were some "community" ocaml boxes on the
internet that a team of people would administer for the good of the
community.  These boxes could hold mailing lists, bugzilla, be a
COAN (ala CPAN) repository, etc.

Management of the box could be done initially by people with
demonstrated experience, and then a voting method where good
work gets additional access to the repository.  This is similar to
the method where by new developers to open source projects get
commit access as their patches demonstrate good work and forward
the project.

The only thing we would need is some contributed hardware and
bandwidth, which sounds perfect for an educational institution :)

Best,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair@orcaware.com>
Plots of your system's performance - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help settingup.

[Aleksey Nogin]

On 08.12.2003 19:49, Blair Zajac wrote:

> However, some questions that I think may be relavent this being
> used as a core Ocaml development tool.
> 
> How many people would manage this system?
> Would it be just you?
> What happens if you get tired of managing the bugzilla system?

Good news:
The server in question is the main CVS/Bugzilla server for the Cornell 
University CS department (http://bugzilla.metaprl.org/ is just a 
shortcut that redirects to http://cvs.cs.cornell.edu:12000/bugzilla/) 
that I've set up a few years ago. It is currently administered by 3 
people (me, a Cornell grad student and a Cornell CS department computing 
facilities staff member) with at least 2 more having root access, but 
not participating in day-to-day maintenance. As far as I understand, the 
department is pretty much committed to maintaining the server as long as 
it is needed by people at Cornell.

Bad news:
So far I do _not_ know whether Cornell would be willing to commit to 
maintaining the OCaml side of Bugzilla, but if there is serious interest 
from the OCaml team in doing this transition, I will do my best to find 
out (I would imagine it would require finding a faculty member at 
Cornell willing to "sponsor" the project; hopefully this would not be 
too hard).

-- 
Aleksey Nogin

Home Page: http://nogin.org/
E-Mail: nogin@cs.caltech.edu (office), aleksey@nogin.org (personal)
Office: Jorgensen 70, tel: (626) 395-2907

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 05:57:40PM -0800, Aleksey Nogin wrote:
> About a year ago there already was a discussion on using Bugzilla for 
> tracking OCaml issues/patches. In 
> http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200211/msg00275.html Xavier Leroy wrote
> 
> >>Would there be any way to get Bugzilla installed at Inria?
> >
> >Bugzilla has a reputation of being awfully hard to install.
> 
> If this is indeed the main reason for not using Bugzilla, I would be 
> willing to host OCaml Bugzilla at http://bugzilla.metaprl.org/ and/or 
> help with setting up and configuring Bugzilla on another machine, as 
> well as help finding a good way to move the current data over.

Bugzilla is an horror to use, please don't.

In particular it's mail interface is totally unsuitable. It doesn't
allow you to post follow ups per mail, nor does the mails posted to you
by bugzilla seem very usefull to me (having loads of uninformative
header stuff for a line or two of content which will in fact be hidden
one or two screens down, and i browse with a full screen mutt client
with 50 or so lines).

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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[Caml-list] Re: [OT] Bugzilla Sucks (WAS: Using Bugzilla for OCaml ..)

[N. Owen Gunden]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 08:47:55AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> [...]
> nor does the mails posted to you by bugzilla seem very usefull to me
> (having loads of uninformative header stuff for a line or two of
> content which will in fact be hidden one or two screens down, and i
> browse with a full screen mutt client with 50 or so lines).

This must be customizable during the bugzilla install or something, because I
get a lot of bugzilla mail and that's not been my experience at all.  A typical
bugzilla message starts with the url of the bug in question, then immediately
displays the comments that have been added to the bug.

Here is a recent (and very typical) bug mailing I got from bugzilla, identical
down to exact spacing:

*** message start ************************************************************
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11359





------- Additional Comments From john@milsson.nu  2003-12-06 01:10 PST -------
Is it not possible to use ncurses to stack dialogs? Just keep them there and
continue merging.



------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
*** message end **************************************************************

IMHO, it doesn't get any more concise than that, apart from maybe
cleaning out a few extraneous newlines.

I can easily see the entire message in mutt, with a measly 40-row terminal.

Cheers,
- O

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Re: [Caml-list] Re: [OT] Bugzilla Sucks (WAS: Using Bugzilla for OCaml ..)

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 03:35:48AM -0500, N. Owen Gunden wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 08:47:55AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > [...]
> > nor does the mails posted to you by bugzilla seem very usefull to me
> > (having loads of uninformative header stuff for a line or two of
> > content which will in fact be hidden one or two screens down, and i
> > browse with a full screen mutt client with 50 or so lines).
> 
> This must be customizable during the bugzilla install or something, because I
> get a lot of bugzilla mail and that's not been my experience at all.  A typical
> bugzilla message starts with the url of the bug in question, then immediately
> displays the comments that have been added to the bug.

Yeah, most assuredly.

> Here is a recent (and very typical) bug mailing I got from bugzilla, identical
> down to exact spacing:
> 
> *** message start ************************************************************
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11359
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

First 6 lost lines, on what i am used to, there is a line about : 

  Please do not reply to this email: if you want to comment on the bug, go
  to the URL shown below and enter your comments there.

which kind of defeats the purpose of a mail interface.

> ------- Additional Comments From john@milsson.nu  2003-12-06 01:10 PST -------
> Is it not possible to use ncurses to stack dialogs? Just keep them there and
> continue merging.

Also, this is hardly readable. try to look at many such mails, and you
will notice that it is very difficult to read the actual content of the
comment, without concentration and effort, it doesn't attract the eye in
the middle of all the junk in the report, and this is actually the
important stuff, not the rest of it, so it should come first, with
actual spacing around the message for easier reading.

> ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
> You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
> *** message end **************************************************************
> 
> IMHO, it doesn't get any more concise than that, apart from maybe
> cleaning out a few extraneous newlines.

Have a look at the debian BTS, and then tell me that again. Here is a
bug opening mail from the debian BTS :

*** message start ***
Package: liblablgtk2-ocaml-dev
Version: 2.2.0-1

$ lablgtk2
Cannot load required shared library:
/usr/lib/ocaml/3.07/stublibs/dlllablgl.so: undefined symbol:
glMultTransposeMatrixd.
$

I'm using Debian unstable updated today from a mirror.
*** message end ***

and the reply-to is conveniently set to :

  Reply-To: ZHAO Wei <zhaoway@public1.ptt.js.cn>, 218823@bugs.debian.org

where 218823 is the bug number. A reply looks like : 

*** message start ***
On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 04:03:48AM +0800, ZHAO Wei wrote:
> Package: liblablgtk2-ocaml-dev
> Version: 2.2.0-1
>
> $ lablgtk2
> Cannot load required shared library:
> /usr/lib/ocaml/3.07/stublibs/dlllablgl.so: undefined symbol:
> glMultTransposeMatrixd.
> $
>
> I'm using Debian unstable updated today from a mirror.

Sure.

What version of the opengl libraries do you use ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
*** message end ***

And you can easily access all of the data by going to :

http://bugs.debian.org/128679

And then, naturally, there is the email control possibility documented
at :

http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control

> e can easily see the entire message in mutt, with a measly 40-row terminal.

Sure sure, but the point remain. The comment is hardly noticeable, and
you cannot reply to such a message.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Yaron M. Minsky]

On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 02:47, Sven Luther wrote:

> Bugzilla is an horror to use, please don't.

Isn't it kind of silly to suggest not using Bugzilla without an
alternative?  I think Aleksey did a good job of pointing out the
shortcomings of the current system, and Bugzilla seems like a big
improvement.  In the absence of something better, what else should be
done?

As for the specific problems, maybe it has a little extra cruft on the
emails, but that hardly seems fatal.

y

> In particular it's mail interface is totally unsuitable. It doesn't
> allow you to post follow ups per mail, nor does the mails posted to you
> by bugzilla seem very usefull to me (having loads of uninformative
> header stuff for a line or two of content which will in fact be hidden
> one or two screens down, and i browse with a full screen mutt client
> with 50 or so lines).
> 
> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther
> 
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|--------/            Yaron M. Minsky              \--------|
|--------\ http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/yminsky/ /--------|

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Nuutti Kotivuori]

Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 02:47, Sven Luther wrote:
>
>> Bugzilla is an horror to use, please don't.
>
> Isn't it kind of silly to suggest not using Bugzilla without an
> alternative?

As a complete outsider to the discussion, I would suggest looking into
a bug tracker called roundup. I find it easy to use, by both web and
mail interfaces - and it is excellently customizable to a variety of
uses.

-- Naked

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 07:02:46AM -0500, Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 02:47, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
> > Bugzilla is an horror to use, please don't.
> 
> Isn't it kind of silly to suggest not using Bugzilla without an
> alternative?  I think Aleksey did a good job of pointing out the
> shortcomings of the current system, and Bugzilla seems like a big
> improvement.  In the absence of something better, what else should be
> done?
> 
> As for the specific problems, maybe it has a little extra cruft on the
> emails, but that hardly seems fatal.

The fatal part is that you can't reply to the emails it sends to you to
make a follow up, which makes it as little suitable as the current
system as far as mail interface is concerned.

That said, i just state my opinion on this, and state my dislike of the
web-based bugzilla BTS, dislike that many share.

The reality is that it is upto the ocaml team to decide on this issue,
and i doubt that they seriously consider changing the current system
that seems to work well for them right now.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Yaron M. Minsky]

On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 08:38, Sven Luther wrote:
> The fatal part is that you can't reply to the emails it sends to you to
> make a follow up, which makes it as little suitable as the current
> system as far as mail interface is concerned.

Mildly inconvenient at worst, and hardly fatal.  You want to make a
follow up, you follow the link and make the follow up.  The key
advantage of the email is that you're notified of changes without having
to poll the web page manually.  

> 
> That said, i just state my opinion on this, and state my dislike of the
> web-based bugzilla BTS, dislike that many share.
> 
> The reality is that it is upto the ocaml team to decide on this issue,
> and i doubt that they seriously consider changing the current system
> that seems to work well for them right now.

> 
> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther
-- 
|--------/            Yaron M. Minsky              \--------|
|--------\ http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/yminsky/ /--------|

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Re: [Caml-list] Using Bugzilla for OCaml - will be willing to host or help setting up.

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 08:52:38AM -0500, Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 08:38, Sven Luther wrote:
> > The fatal part is that you can't reply to the emails it sends to you to
> > make a follow up, which makes it as little suitable as the current
> > system as far as mail interface is concerned.
> 
> Mildly inconvenient at worst, and hardly fatal.  You want to make a
> follow up, you follow the link and make the follow up.  The key
> advantage of the email is that you're notified of changes without having
> to poll the web page manually.  

Sure, try to do that behind a ssh connection to your mail server. Sure
lynx does a good job at viewing web pages on text-only terminals, but
making followups in a lynx-based bugzilla is less than convivial.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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