On Fri, 2 May 2003, hatky wrote: [...]
Anyway, don't let me slow you down. Just remember that bug tracking is a social issue, and you have to pay attention to how the other developers feel about it.
I am not sure what they realy think yes I only got 3 responces 2 of witch where positive :)... I guess I will have to wait for the next week to start when codewaver will return to flame me (or not) :)
This is Wine's bugzilla so you don't need to worry about CodeWeavers flaming you (or about the CodeWeavers' needs). However, as Dan said, beware of the Wine developpers ;-).
I know I used meta-bugs in the past and we used them too in our internal CodeWeavers bugzilla database. But meta-bugs are not very practical in the long term and it is worth considering alternatives. In particular:
* Component field Some developpers are specialized in a certain aspect of Wine. Havnig specialists is good, it's certainly more efficient than having to learn from scratch each time. So we need to provide a way for specialists to find bugs in their area of expertise. The 'Component' field is one way to do so. Let's say you're a Direct3D specialist, you can find bugs in that area by querying Bugzilla for all bugs tagged with 'Component=wine-directx'.
* keywords Keywords are another way to tag and query bugs. It's pretty flexible and even lets you put multiple keywords on a bug. For instance you can find all the bugs related to conformance testing by querying Bugzilla for bugs that have the 'conformance' keyword. Similarly you can look for all bugs related to programs for which the source is available by searching for bugs with the 'source' keyword. See http://bugs.winehq.com/describekeywords.cgi
That being said,
* Bugzilla queries don't appear to work. Newman do you know what's up? Is it a database performance issue? Bugzilla bug?
* Direct3D and DirectSound are pertty different areas. Maybe we should split the wine-directx component into direct3d, directdraw, directsound and the generic directx.
* Maybe we need a 'wine-msvcrt' component. I know there are people interested in msvcrt but looking at the component list I don't know where such bugs would go. Or maybe we should be a bit more general and have a 'wine-libc' so that it includes crtdll and potential future C++ libraries, etc.
* Maybe we should add more keywords. I'm not saying we should do it, but adding 'game' keyword would provide the same functionality as the current game meta-bug. If we go this way, I could see another useful keyword: 'installer' to identify all bugs related to application installers. But we have to be careful not to add frivolous keywords.
* One useful things that can be done now is to inspect all new bugs to make sure that: - the component field is set correctly - the download URL to the binary or source is provided if applicable (in case of doubt ask the reporter) - all applicable keywords are set That said, things seem to be already pretty much in order (more so for the component field than for keywords).
* Maybe people don't know about the keywords, components and Bugzilla queries. Maybe they need to be publicized somewhat.