[Koha-devel] patches & bugs.koha.org

[Andrew Moore]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 7:03 AM, Paul POULAIN <paul.poulain at free.fr> wrote:
> I fully agree with the idea of pointing the bug if there is one. But I
> strongly disagree about adding a bug if there is none.

Hi Paul -

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you're on board with putting bug
numbers in the git commit message when relevant. I think that really
helps me out, too.

I wrote that there after a brief discussion with some other
contributors. I intentionally attempted to word it so that it was
clearly not a requirement, but just something that may make it easier
for other contributors and the Release Manager. If it's not something
you're interested in doing, I don't think that will be a problem at
all. I understand that sometimes it seems like unnecessary work to
report a bug for a one line patch.

I don't think our views are too far apart. Please allow me to see if I
can bring them a little closer, though:

> For at least 2 reasons :
> - it is an obviously "long" process to add a bug. If we have found a
> small & quickly fixed bug, then there is no need to add a bug imo.
> Having a complete patch comment is necessary for the ppl
> reviewing/validating the patch. But the need of a bug.koha.org is
> unclear to me (the PATCH-sent thing is not enough imo)

It does sometimes seem like a long process, especially compared to a
small patch. Could we make it easier by making bugzilla accept entries
via email?
<http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:FAQ:Bugzilla_Email#How_do_I_set_up_the_email_interface_to_submit.2Fchange_bugs_via_email.3F>

About small and quickly fixed bugs, sometimes what seems simple at
first turns into two or three patches to get it right. I'm notoriously
bad at this. Having a bug to tie them together may help others. Maybe
this isn't enough to justify the cost of opening a bug for each one,
though.

> - we (BibLibre) have a specific internal (& french) tool for our
> customer requests. When we fix a bug discovered by a client, frankly,
> it's a loss of time to translate it to english & rewrite it to bugs.koha.org

I'd like to encourage you to submit any of those bugs that are
appropriate to bugs.koha.org. I understand that feature requests or
contracted development from your clients may be completely
inappropriate for bugs.koha.org. That's no problem. But, in the event
of a bug that will not reveal usage or client information, having that
information in bugs.koha.org may help users realize that they're
seeing the same behavior that others are and that a fix may be on the
way. It helps the other contributors know how many outstanding bugs we
have reported against our product at any time. It may also help me
stop writing so many bugs. I may even be fixing one of yours right
now!

Paul, I know that I'm not going to completely convince you to do this
all the time. In fact, I personally probably won't do it all the time.
But, I'll encourage you and others to do it when it makes sense. If
you'd like for me to make another page on the wiki for "coding
suggestions" or something like that, I understand.

By the way, my suggestion to write a git hook to enforce this policy
was shot down, and understandably so!

Thanks,
-Andy