Request for comments: New Bugzilla-based contribution process

[Mark Reinhold]

> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:33:29 +0100
> From: volker.simonis at gmail.com

> I'm really happy that the Bugzilla is finally up and running. There is
> however one point, which hasn't been addressed until now. It is
> already hard to find all the information which belongs to a bug or
> changeset. The easy way is from changeset to bug, but the other way
> round, from Bug to changeset is already harder, because not every bug
> links to the corresponding changeset. Not to mention the webrevs and
> the discussions about the webrevs which happened on the mailing list
> (see [1] for a previous discussion on this topic).
> 
> Now we get just two more system, the Bugzilla bug tracker and the
> Community Code Review site [2]. While this is good thing in general,
> how can we ensure that not only the bugzilla entry links to the Sun
> bug via the "sunbug" entry, but also the Sun bug links back to the
> corresponding Bugzilla entry. And how can we ensure to have a link
> from the changelist and/or from the bug to the codereview? The
> Bugzilla instance offers the great opportunity that discussions about
> a webrev can take place in the open, inside Bugzilla and are preserved
> there together with the bug. On the other hand, this hides the
> discussions about webrevs from the lists. I don't know Bugzilla, but
> perhaps it is possible to forward all changes of bugs from a certain
> category(e.g. hotspot), to the corresponding mailing list?
> 
> What are your opinions about how we can get a consistent view of all
> the information belonging to a bug?

You raise some very good points here.  Until the Semantic Web becomes a
reality, however, and we all start writing all our documents in perfectly
cross-linked XML, I'm afraid the best we can do is identify reasonable
tools and practices to help us live with our ever-growing tangled web of
documents.

As Dmitri suggested later on, automating the cross-linkage of bug reports
and changesets should be straightforward and is something we should look
into.

Linking Sun bugs back to Bugzilla bugs can also be automated, by scanning
Bugzilla bugs for sunbug= properties and planting corresponding reverse
links in the Sun bug database.

Linking code reviews on cr.openjdk.java.net to, and from, the bug
databases should be possible with a bit of work.  If people consistently
name their top-level review directories with bug numbers then it's easy;
if not then we'll have to come up with some other way to convey that
information.

The harder problem is e-mail.  We can encourage people to use Bugzilla
comments, but the e-mail habit runs strong and deep -- especially within
Sun -- so that's likely to prove an uphill battle.  Fortunately Google
is pretty good at looking for contiguous strings of digits; I'm afraid
that's the best solution that I know of in the near term.

In the longer term it'd be nice to have a tool like Review Board set up
for code reviews, but that's not something we'll have time for in the
next few months.

FYI I've created a few (Bugzilla!) bugs to capture the linkage ideas
that could be implemented near-term [1].

- Mark


[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=web&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ACCEPTED&bug_status=REOPENED&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=