Update on bug system for OpenJDK (web-discuss)

[David Holmes]

Alan,

Alan Bateman said the following on 05/31/11 03:40:
> Kelly O'Hair wrote:
>> :
>> Part of the problem with the JDK and Java in general is the number of 
>> users out there.
>> We want all the good bug reports we can get, but without some kind of 
>> governor or quality of input limiter
>> I have concerns of our ability to manage this.
>>   
> Right, we want (and need) the good bug reports. We also want them in a 
> timely manner. Personally I wouldn't object to seeing some poor quality 
> bug reports if it also meant getting good quality bug reports as soon as 
> they are submitted.
> 
> I'll go out on a limb and also suggest that some percentage of usage 
> bugs from inexperienced developers can be a good thing. It can help 
> identify common pitfalls and could help to improve documentation and APIs.

I agree - but that needs to be handled by the "first tier" system (as is 
mostly done today). I don't want to be the one who has to wade through 
these issues and identify them - by the time a bug gets into bugster 
today it "should" have reasonable merit and shouldn't be a duplicate.

> As Kelly and others say, if we can somehow redirect the non-developer 
> types to somewhere else then it would reduce the noise. Another thing is 
> reducing the number of dups. I think the high percentage of duplicates 
> today is because it's just not possible or easy to search via the 
> bugs.sun.com interface. All told, I think the system should be open to 
> developers to register and submit bugs themselves.

I was with you right up to the last sentence. Having to register would 
dissuade some users from bothering to report non-bugs (but it may also 
dissuade them from submitting real bugs!). There needs to be a system 
where a report can easily be entered by anyone, but that report needs to 
be pre-processed before being accepted as a bug (in todays terms it gets 
submitted as an "incident", processed and if deemed suitable then a bug 
is created in bugster).

I prefer to see this isolation boundary maintained, because when I 
"subscribe" to see all the bugs in particular categories, then I only 
want to see real bug reports, not these initial incidents. Now if the 
bug system can easily tag these initial reports and filter them from the 
email notifications then perhaps that would be okay.

Cheers,
David