There seems to be disagreement between various users on the propriety of
trackers. These are bug reports that don't describe a single bug, nor a
feature request, but are used to group together related issues.
Trackers (also known as meta bugs or umbrella bugs) are used heavily on
Mozilla's own Bugzilla, as you can see here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=meta&resolution=---
I shall also quote for convenience the description from the keywords
page there:
"A placeholder bug for tracking the progress of other bugs. Meta bugs
are made dependent on other bugs so that interested parties can be kept
up-to-date with status via one bug, without having to receive all the
mails related to all the bugs related to the development of a particular
area."
Just before the concept was brought here, there was a thread on it
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/bugs/7640.html
in which nobody expressed any objection, and then a few trackers were
then filed.
However, since that time, two or three people have been killing off
random trackers, seemingly because they personally don't like the
concept. The arguments have included:
1. That's what keywords are for.
It's hard to draw the line between the what keywords are for and what
trackers are for. But there are a number of functional differences:
- anybody can create a tracker, whereas only someone with the necessary
access to the Bugzilla configuration can create a keyword
- trackers can track other trackers, but keywords can't track other keywords
- trackers can generate an email notification when one of the tracked
bugs changes status
But in practice, some groupings of bugs are more suited to trackers, and
others to keywords. For instance, if there are likely to be a large
number of bugs in a given category, a keyword would probably be better.
But on a Bugzilla installation having a million or so bug reports on
it, loads of keywords that each group together 5-10 related issues would
bloat the keyword list, and so trackers would be more likely to be used
for these.
2. It doesn't help in getting them fixed/Nobody fixing D bugs has found
them useful.
Bugzilla isn't about the few people who are using Bugzilla primarily to
find and fix bugs. It's about maintaining a list of bugs in a given
software product or line of products. The majority of users are using
it primarily to file bugs, discuss bugs and to some extent perform
housekeeping tasks such as flagging duplicates.
Thinking about it I suppose that, for the most part, the people who find
trackers useful are those who use them for tracking. That is, to keep
up to date with the progress in fixing bugs in a certain area of the
software.
3. Such lists of bugs belong on a wiki, not on Bugzilla.
Having such lists on a wiki or other separate website might have some
advantages, such as being able to present the information in a better
way than is possible under Bugzilla. But for this to work we would need
to make sure people are aware of this external facility. There are
further logistical challenges when it comes to maintaining it given that
it would be separate from Bugzilla. A simple wiki page that lists bugs
does nothing to make it easier for users to see how many of them are
resolved.
I suppose a web-based tool could be written to provide tracking
functionality. At the most basic level, it would store lists of bug
numbers, and use the CSV output mode from Bugzilla to count up bugs from
these lists by status. A more sophisticated tool of this sort would
include an email bot that subscibes to updates on the tracked bugs and
relays them to interested parties.
But I suppose most people in the Mozilla bug-reporting community would
argue that this is reinventing the wheel, and you might as well just
have trackers within Bugzilla.
4. The status field of a tracker is meaningless/likely to be
meaninglessly changed.
There was a brief exchange about it on this thread
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/5112d61b.5010...@digitalmars.com?page=2
on which it was pointed out that trackers will tend to be closed and
reopened as all the bugs it tracks are fixed and then a new one is
opened. Obviously this isn't ideal, but it's only a small maintenance
overhead (unless you get rid of it by deciding to just leave the tracker
open all the time).
Perhaps better would be a new Bugzilla feature whereby an issue can be
designated as a tracker, such that its status automatically depends on
the status of its dependent bugs.
But even in the absence of this feature, it doesn't strike me as a
reason to ban trackers.
Anyway ... I suppose what all this goes to show is that trackers have
their pros and cons. If they were all bad, they certainly wouldn't have
thrived on b.m.o for all these years.
As such, while some people may not like trackers, others find them
useful, and they don't seem to be doing any harm. As such, my
recommendation would be to keep them now that we have them.
What do other people think?
Stewart.
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