Bugzilla: A Call to Arms

[Andriy Palamarchuk]

We already had discussion on wine-devel about
importance of polishing Wine, making a set of
applications to work very well.

Cruicial in this process is prioritizing of the
issues, work distribution between developers. The
companies already have internal testing and bug fixing
process.

Of course, each company has their own product-specific
work, but most of the problems are general for Wine.
I suggest to share this work more actively using
Bugzilla.

Recently there was some work done in cleaning the
issues database and it is in pretty much usable
condition.

To start using bugzilla more actively I suggest
following steps:
1) define subsystem/direction owners. The owners will
get their system-specific bugs. They won't necessary
fix the bugs themselfs, but will have complete picture
about all the issues in their subsystems and
coordinate the bug fixing.

Developers, please let me know your areas of
expertese.
I can overview Wine applications.

2) more formally define process of bugs handling and
use this process. There is no high qualification
needed to filter out bad bug reports, duplicates,
request users for more information, attach relay trace
to the bug, etc, etc.
Result - developers will have to spend less time on
discussion trivial bugs with users, will have better
bug reports to work on, users will be more involved
with more active feedback. Some users are very
cooperative and some bug reports are really excellent!
I see that Tony Lambregts, Michael Cardenas, others do
a great work with the Bugzilla database.
I'm also going to  contribute some time for this.

3) Prioritize bugs. This is, probably, part of (2).
Some bugs, while relatively easy to fix provide very
big value for the end user. Often developers do not
choose such issues to work on, exactly because these
issues do not present challenge to them.
BTW, I do not see a field "Priority" in the bugs
entries.

4) Ask users to submit there problems in Bugzilla.
Submitting Bugzilla report allows us to involve users
more actively, persist their bug reports.

Bugzilla is a more scalable approach than using
mailing list only. Of course we still will discuss
bugs on the mailing lists, bug big part of
communication will be unloaded.

There is a lot to do and discuss.
For me the goal is to have this process not worse than
in Mozilla project. This is impressive:
http://webtools.mozilla.org/miscstats/
http://mothra.mozilla.org/webtools/miscstats/

I also like their bug report form:
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helper.html

And this is for 1 application only! I'm sure Wine can
generate much bigger volume of bug reports ;-)

Look forward for your comments.
Andriy

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com

[Tony Lambregts]

Andriy Palamarchuk wrote:
> We already had discussion on wine-devel about
> importance of polishing Wine, making a set of
> applications to work very well.
>
> Cruicial in this process is prioritizing of the
> issues, work distribution between developers. The
> companies already have internal testing and bug fixing
> process.
>
> Of course, each company has their own product-specific
> work, but most of the problems are general for Wine.
> I suggest to share this work more actively using
> Bugzilla.
>
> Recently there was some work done in cleaning the
> issues database and it is in pretty much usable
> condition.
>
> To start using bugzilla more actively I suggest
> following steps:
> - define subsystem/direction owners. The owners will
>
> get their system-specific bugs. They won't necessary
> fix the bugs themselfs, but will have complete picture
> about all the issues in their subsystems and
> coordinate the bug fixing.
>
> Developers, please let me know your areas of
> expertese.
> I can overview Wine applications.

Let me see if I have this right  you want an inventory of who has what 
area of experise right. For example  if a bug report seems to point to a 
problem with sockets you could in theory assign it to Martin Wick, or if 
the problem was with copy protection It could be assigned to Laurent 
Pinchart.  Of course  that assumes that both of them are ok with this.

What exactly do you mean by overview applications? I'm guessing you mean 
the wine lib applications currently under /programs right?

Anyway this would be very usefull to the people who want to triage bugzilla.
> - more formally define process of bugs handling and
>
> use this process. There is no high qualification
> needed to filter out bad bug reports, duplicates,
> request users for more information, attach relay trace
> to the bug, etc, etc.
> Result - developers will have to spend less time on
> discussion trivial bugs with users, will have better
> bug reports to work on, users will be more involved
> with more active feedback. Some users are very
> cooperative and some bug reports are really excellent!
> I see that Tony Lambregts, Michael Cardenas, others do
> a great work with the Bugzilla database.
> I'm also going to  contribute some time for this.

Think if we can get a few more people to to help with this it would be 
better
> - Prioritize bugs. This is, probably, part of (2).
>
> Some bugs, while relatively easy to fix provide very
> big value for the end user. Often developers do not
> choose such issues to work on, exactly because these
> issues do not present challenge to them.
> BTW, I do not see a field "Priority" in the bugs
> entries.

The Severity field is for this  and yes we should use it.
> - Ask users to submit there problems in Bugzilla.
>
> Submitting Bugzilla report allows us to involve users
> more actively, persist their bug reports.
>
> Bugzilla is a more scalable approach than using
> mailing list only. Of course we still will discuss
> bugs on the mailing lists, bug big part of
> communication will be unloaded.

If  there are no objections can we change the official documentation to 
say that bugzilla is the place to report bugs.   I noticed that when the 
wineinstall script had a bug in it that it told the users to report it 
to wine-devel  when it should point them to bugzilla.  One other comment 
about this is that bugzilla's address is 
http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/ and I think it scares people away from 
using it.  I have nothing against CodeWeavers but I think If bugzilla's 
address was http://www.winehq.com/bugzilla users would be certain it is 
the place for wine bugs
> There is a lot to do and discuss.
> For me the goal is to have this process not worse than
> in Mozilla project. This is impressive:
> http://webtools.mozilla.org/miscstats/
> http://mothra.mozilla.org/webtools/miscstats/
>
> I also like their bug report form:
> http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helper.html
>
> And this is for 1 application only! I'm sure Wine can
> generate much bigger volume of bug reports ;-)
>
> Look forward for your comments.
> Andriy
>
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
> http://health.yahoo.com

[Jeremy White]

> to wine-devel  when it should point them to bugzilla.  One other comment 
> about this is that bugzilla's address is 
> http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/ and I think it scares people away from 
> using it.  I have nothing against CodeWeavers but I think If bugzilla's 
> address was http://www.winehq.com/bugzilla users would be certain it is 
> the place for wine bugs

Wouldn't 
    http://bugs.winehq.com 
be even better?

We can make that switch fairly readily, and we're cheerful
to do so.  (Okay, I'm cheerful to do so, Jeremy is going to
kill me for adding to his workload <grin>).

Cheers,

Jer

[Jeremy Newman]

I'm not going to even debate this one <g>

http://bugs.winehq.com
http://bugs.winehq.org
http://bugs.codeweavers.com

Are now all the same website. Use whatever Url makes you fell all warm
and fuzzy.

On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 10:18, Jeremy White wrote:
> > to wine-devel  when it should point them to bugzilla.  One other comment 
> > about this is that bugzilla's address is 
> > http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/ and I think it scares people away from 
> > using it.  I have nothing against CodeWeavers but I think If bugzilla's 
> > address was http://www.winehq.com/bugzilla users would be certain it is 
> > the place for wine bugs
>
> Wouldn't 
>     http://bugs.winehq.com 
> be even better?
>
> We can make that switch fairly readily, and we're cheerful
> to do so.  (Okay, I'm cheerful to do so, Jeremy is going to
> kill me for adding to his workload <grin>).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jer

[Andriy Palamarchuk]

--- Tony Lambregts 
wrote:
> Andriy Palamarchuk wrote:

[... skipped ...]
> > Developers, please let me know your areas of
> > expertese.
> > I can overview Wine applications.
>
> Let me see if I have this right  you want an
> inventory of who has what 
> area of experise right. For example  if a bug report
> seems to point to a 
> problem with sockets you could in theory assign it
> to Martin Wick, or if 
> the problem was with copy protection It could be
> assigned to Laurent 
> Pinchart.  Of course  that assumes that both of them
> are ok with this.

Of course, the responsibility is voluntary (as the
whole project BTW :-).

Suggested list (so far):
* Guy L. Albertelli - GUI
* Alexandre Julliard - wineserver, kernel
* Marcus Meissner - printing
* Andreas Mohr - documentation
* Andriy Palamarchuk - winelib applications under
"programs" directory (agreed).
* Dimitrie O. Paun - GUI
* Laurent Pinchart - copy protection
* Eric Pouech - sound
* Hidenori TAKESHIMA - quartz, DirectShow (is the
scope too narrow?)
* Dmitry Timoshkov - internationalization, Unicode,
keyboard i/o
* Martin Wick - sockets
Do we need following directions, who are good owners:
* DOS support
* common controls
* command-line handling
* wine tools

This list is *very* subjective. I went through the
last month archives of wine-patches. Please, let me
know if you agree or not, know other better owner for
the subsystem, want to suggest new subsystem, any
other comments are welcome.
> What exactly do you mean by overview applications?
> I'm guessing you mean 
> the wine lib applications currently under /programs
> right?

Correct, see above
> > - more formally define process of bugs handling
>
> and
> > use this process.

[... skipped ...]
> > I see that Tony Lambregts, Michael Cardenas, others
>
> do
> > a great work with the Bugzilla database.
> > I'm also going to  contribute some time for this.
>
> Think if we can get a few more people to to help
> with this it would be 
> better

Completely agree with you. This is why I invited the
companies testers for this work ;-) I'm sure we'll get
more volunteers from Wine users as soon as we will be
more responsive in Bugzilla.
Anyway, the first priority is to start to actually
move bugs throgh their lifecycle to the RESOLVED
status and now the bottleneck is on status NEW.
> > - Prioritize bugs. This is, probably, part of (2).
> >
> > Some bugs, while relatively easy to fix provide
>
> very
> > big value for the end user. Often developers do not
> > choose such issues to work on, exactly because
>
> these
> > issues do not present challenge to them.
> > BTW, I do not see a field "Priority" in the bugs
> > entries.
>
> The Severity field is for this  and yes we should
> use it.

Not exactly. "Severity" is an importance for the end
user - e.g. crash is the highest level of severity.
"Priority" is an importance of the issue for us.
E.g. crash of an application due to Wine not
supporting  vxd is severity "Critical" for the user,
but priority is "Minor" for the Wine developers
because we are not going to support vxd anyways.

[... skipped ...]
> If  there are no objections can we change the
> official documentation to 
> say that bugzilla is the place to report bugs. I
> noticed that when the 
> wineinstall script had a bug in it that it told the
> users to report it 
> to wine-devel  when it should point them to
> bugzilla.  One other comment 
> about this is that bugzilla's address is 
> http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/ and I think it
> scares people away from 
> using it.  I have nothing against CodeWeavers but I
> think If bugzilla's 
> address was http://www.winehq.com/bugzilla users
> would be certain it is 
> the place for wine bugs

Agree. Now enter bugs to bugzilla for these changes
;-)

Andriy

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com

[Tony Lambregts]

Andriy Palamarchuk wrote:
> --- Tony Lambregts 
> wrote:
> > Andriy Palamarchuk wrote:
>
> [snip]

[snip]
> Of course, the responsibility is voluntary (as the
> whole project BTW :-).
>
> Suggested list (so far):
> - Guy L. Albertelli - GUI
> - Alexandre Julliard - wineserver, kernel
> - Marcus Meissner - printing
> - Andreas Mohr - documentation
> - Andriy Palamarchuk - winelib applications under
>
> "programs" directory (agreed).
> - Dimitrie O. Paun - GUI
> - Laurent Pinchart - copy protection
> - Eric Pouech - sound
> - Hidenori TAKESHIMA - quartz, DirectShow (is the
>
> scope too narrow?)
> - Dmitry Timoshkov - internationalization, Unicode,
>
> keyboard i/o
> - Martin Wick - sockets
>
> Do we need following directions, who are good owners:
> - DOS support
> - common controls
> - command-line handling
> - wine tools

* Dustin Navea - wine tools (scripts?)
* Duane Clark - toolbar
> This list is *very* subjective. I went through the
> last month archives of wine-patches. Please, let me
> know if you agree or not, know other better owner for
> the subsystem, want to suggest new subsystem, any
> other comments are welcome.

Could we can get some help to make  this list somewhat complete, Please?

[snip]
> > > issues do not present challenge to them.
> > > BTW, I do not see a field "Priority" in the bugs
> > > entries.
> >
> > The Severity field is for this  and yes we should
> > use it.
>
> Not exactly. "Severity" is an importance for the end
> user - e.g. crash is the highest level of severity.
> "Priority" is an importance of the issue for us.
> E.g. crash of an application due to Wine not
> supporting  vxd is severity "Critical" for the user,
> but priority is "Minor" for the Wine developers
> because we are not going to support vxd anyways.

To most users that encounter a bug the severity is "critical".  It is up 
to the bug owners and triage to decide what is important. Mozzilla has a 
resolution "WON'T FIX" for some bugs.  I think vxd is "WONT FIX". As a 
long term tester of Mozilla I can say with confidence that severity is a 
flag for triage and development not for bug reporters.  [blocker]  is 
the highest priority: for example something prevents wine from compiling.

Anyway the way that mozilla uses bugzilla is not the only way to use it. 
We have the source code if we really want to change it.  I just don't 
see that it is nesessary.
> [... skipped ...]
> > If  there are no objections can we change the
> > official documentation to 
> > say that bugzilla is the place to report bugs. I
> > noticed that when the 
> > wineinstall script had a bug in it that it told the
> > users to report it 
> > to wine-devel  when it should point them to
> > bugzilla.  One other comment 
> > about this is that bugzilla's address is 
> > http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/ and I think it
> > scares people away from 
> > using it.  I have nothing against CodeWeavers but I
> > think If bugzilla's 
> > address was http://www.winehq.com/bugzilla users
> > would be certain it is 
> > the place for wine bugs
>
> Agree. Now enter bugs to bugzilla for these changes
> ;-)

I entered bugs for the first two,  and the third seems to be resolved 
already. <grin>

Tony Lambregts

[Dustin Navea]

--- Andriy Palamarchuk  wrote:
> --- Tony Lambregts 
> wrote:
>
> Of course, the responsibility is voluntary (as the
> whole project BTW :-).
>
> Suggested list (so far):
> - Guy L. Albertelli - GUI
> - Alexandre Julliard - wineserver, kernel
> - Marcus Meissner - printing
> - Andreas Mohr - documentation
> - Andriy Palamarchuk - winelib applications under
>
> "programs" directory (agreed).
> - Dimitrie O. Paun - GUI
> - Laurent Pinchart - copy protection
> - Eric Pouech - sound
> - Hidenori TAKESHIMA - quartz, DirectShow (is the
>
> scope too narrow?)
> - Dmitry Timoshkov - internationalization, Unicode,
>
> keyboard i/o
> - Martin Wick - sockets
>
> Do we need following directions, who are good
> owners:
> - DOS support
> - common controls
> - command-line handling
> - wine tools
>
> This list is *very* subjective. I went through the
> last month archives of wine-patches. Please, let me
> know if you agree or not, know other better owner
> for
> the subsystem, want to suggest new subsystem, any
> other comments are welcome.

Update:

* wine tools: Dustin Navea

IOW: I will help out with wine tools (bash/perl stuff)
and when i can i will try to work on some actual wine
bugs... knowing only enough c to bugfix can always be
helpful... ;)

-Dustin

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com

[Guy L. Albertelli]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andriy Palamarchuk" 
To: "Tony Lambregts" 
Cc: "wine-devel" 
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: Bugzilla: A Call to Arms
> Suggested list (so far):
> - Guy L. Albertelli - GUI

[snip]

Whoa! I'll be glad to handle some of the common controls (especially rebar)
but not the whole GUI. :)

Guy

[Andriy Palamarchuk]

--- "Guy L. Albertelli"  wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andriy Palamarchuk" 
> To: "Tony Lambregts"
>
> Cc: "wine-devel" 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 12:08 PM
> Subject: Re: Bugzilla: A Call to Arms
> > Suggested list (so far):
> > - Guy L. Albertelli - GUI
>
> [snip]
>
> Whoa! I'll be glad to handle some of the common
> controls (especially rebar)
> but not the whole GUI. :)

I agree with you - GUI is too general area. We can
narrow the scope - give you only common controls or
make a few people to own all GUI controls/issues...
I prefer the first approach.

Andriy Palamarchuk

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com