It's also a good way to log all new features as well. What we really need is to find some volunteers (hint hint). :-) Bug systems and what not is not going to get very far without someone to handle the bugs. It doesn't have to be one person but can be a shared responsibility.
As Dave mentioned, a good FAQ and maybe an expanded tutorial on include/exclude would help. I see the following (suggested) categories: Bugs, Feature Requests, FAQ questions(Rsync Hangs etc), Rules (include/exclude Qs), librsync devel Qs. sri On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 10:34:07AM -0600, Dave Dykstra wrote: > I disagree that the number of rsync bugs is too low to bother tracking > in a bug tracking system. I think that a lot of things have been posted > that are genuine bugs but have been forgotten about because none of the > developers have had the time to track them. If bug reports were all > dealt with quickly I agree there'd be no need for a bug tracking system, > but that's not the case for rsync. I think it would be a good idea to > have a bugzilla system set up for rsync, especially if we can get some > volunteers to watch the system and make determinations about all the > reports that are put in. I think it would also help to forward all > messages put into the system to the rsync developers' mailing list. > Having a well-maintained FAQ would also be valuable, to keep the noise > put into the bug tracking system down. > > - Dave > > > On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:42:03PM +1100, Martin Pool wrote: > > On 5 Dec 2002, Sriram Ramkrishna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > What we do in the GNOME project is to find volunteers to run triage > > > and catalog the bugs. If you have a "bugmaster" position who could > > > coordinate something like this. > > > > The situation is rather different to GNOME, as jw notes: the code is > > not growing very quickly, and there are far fewer developers available > > to work on it. > > > > > > There used to be another bug reporting system but it was being ignored > > > > so Martin turned it off. > > > > Yes, I did. I think the system was broken by some kind of > > infrastructure migration, and since nobody seemed to use it I put up > > this page rather than fixing it: > > > > http://rsync.samba.org/nobugs.html > > > > One problem was that it used tridge's Jitterbug system, which is a > > nice program but a bit harder to learn than Bugzilla, or at least less > > familiar to most people. Also, because it runs mostly over email, it > > quickly fills up with spam. > > > > But the main thing that discouraged me from maintaining it was just > > that most of the entries were not valid bugs. We had large numbers of > > > > - misunderstandings of how to use rsync (operator error) > > > > - massively incomplete reports (e.g. just "it fails", without any > > error message.) > > > > - architectural limitations (e.g. upfront scan) > > > > - other junk entries > > > > and in addition many of them were redundantly reported. I think > > probably >90% of entries were like this. > > > > You can see this to a lesser extent in the FAQ-O-Matic: > > > > http://rsync.samba.org/fom-serve/cache/223.html > > http://rsync.samba.org/fom-serve/cache/39.html > > http://rsync.samba.org/fom-serve/cache/233.html > > > > Too many people fail to realize that filing a useful bug is actuallly > > a lot of work and requires that the reporter actually put a bit of > > thought into the problem. </rant> > > > > So the database was full of things that were not really bugs, which > > made it pretty useless either for people who wanted to find out about > > a bug they might be experiencing, or developers wanting to know how > > many bugs there are. > > > > I'm sure GNOME has had this too, but if I understand correctly they > > reduced their junk bug count in the first place by throwing out the > > whole database, and then by putting a lot of work into triage and > > cleaning. > > > > I think a better way go forward would be for volunteers to help > > maintain an FAQ. This might be a good way to address common problems, > > whether they result from misunderstandings or from program errors. It > > could be in FAQ-O-Matic or something else. > > > > Since new bug reports are relatively rare, but problems and > > misunderstandings seem to occur repeatedly I think this would be the > > most useful way to get all the information in one place. > > > > So who's interested in working on that? > -- > To unsubscribe or change options: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync > Before posting, read: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To unsubscribe or change options: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html