Update on bug system for OpenJDK (web-discuss)

David Holmes David.Holmes at oracle.com
Tue May 31 09:50:15 UTC 2011


Alan Bateman said the following on 05/31/11 19:05:
> David Holmes wrote:
>>
>> 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.
> It's not clear to me that we need this filtering, at least not 
> initially. I can't imagine end-users seeking out the OpenJDK bug 
> database, unless they have a message dialog or error log that tells them 
> to go there. So if consumers could be directed somewhere else then 
> there's a good chance that most of the bugs will come from developers 
> that want to help by reporting a bug or maybe contributing a fix. Sure, 
> we'll still get some poor quality bug reports but that is par for the 
> course. I would suggest it would be better to see how it goes before 
> deciding to setup a quarantine area. Another thing is that one would 
> hope that an open bug database will encourage more volunteers to help, 
> and so there should be more eyes on these bug reports (and so one would 
> hope that the poor reports will be closed quickly).

Even if closed quickly I will already have seen and had to read them 
(assuming I get my subscription issues resolved :) ). In fact I'd 
probably be the person that closed them ;-)

The key thing here is whether there is one system for everything or two 
systems as we have today in Oracle. If it is the latter then I agree 
there is less need for filtering on the actual bug system. But I get the 
impression from other community members that they definitely do not want 
two systems.

It did occur to me that there may be other ways to handle this. For 
example, to borrow from current practices, if the 
quick-and-easy-submit-bug-report interface placed new bugs into a 
specific product/component grouping (say java->incidents :) ) which were 
then triaged and re-directed to more specific components, then I could 
simply not subscribe to java->incidents. Or if we reserve the initial 
submission state (new?) for these raw reports, and used a different 
state (accepted?) for the triaged ones, then I may be able to exclude 
the creation of news bugs from my notifications (of course that assumes 
I have that level of control).

Anyway without actually playing with the systems this is all speculation.

Cheers,
David

>> :
>>
>> 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 don't know how many projects allow bug reports to be submitted 
> anonymously. At least with bugs.openjdk.java.net you have to login, and 
> same thing for other bugzillas that I've submitted bugs to. With the 
> legacy bugs.sun.com then you also have to fill out a form with your 
> details. One useful thing about requiring a submitter to login is that 
> there is contact address, useful if follow-up is required to duplicate 
> or verify a bug.
> 
> -Alan.



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