On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Molle Bestefich wrote: [...]
It's mainly a user interface thing. Freetext keywords seem like this really weird feature, which is not clearly represented in the UI, and where the consequences of entering a particular keyword is not especially clear. I think that noone likes to use it (feel free to correct me).
I don't share your aversion for keywords. As for them not being clearly represented in the GUI, at least when a bug has a keyword, the keyword is clearly visible in the 'Keywords:' field, whereas when it is associated to a meta-bug all you see is a cryptic dependency on bug 967 or some such.
Also the Bugzilla keywords are not freetext. More on this below.
Metabugs are much more clear. There's a descriptive text and discussion page for the metabug, where people can discuss which bugs really belong there, or whether this and that bug is related, or which bugs are most critical and needs to be prioritized.
There is a page which describes each keyword. To get to it simply click on the 'Keywords:' label in any bug:
http://bugs.winehq.org/describekeywords.cgi
Note: On this page you can see how many bugs are related to each keyword. Simply click on the bug count and you get all the bugs for that keyword.
Keywords are also prone to spelling mistakes. Enter "shell23" instead of "shell32", noone will find the bug.
No. As I said above the Bugzilla keywords are not freetext. Type 'shell23' and all you will get is the following error message: (on a violently red background to be sure you notice it<g>)
shell23 is not a known keyword. The legal keyword names are listed here.
Metabugs on the other hand are prone to typos. Say I type '976' instead of '967', Bugzilla won't issue an error message. And if I don't follow the link to make sure I typed right I will not notice the mistake. As you mentioned such a simple typo will prevent people from finding the bug.
And since components might be a better match than keywords for some tasks, I will just mention that like keywords they are not freetext, they are clearly displayed in the GUI, and have a page describing them (http://bugs.winehq.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Wine).