Hi Guillaume, Good point. Comments below...
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Guillaume Paumier <gpaum...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 2:11 AM, Rob Lanphier <ro...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >> Short version: This mail is fishing for feedback on proposed work on >> Gerrit-Bugzilla integration to replace code review tags. > >> I preferred that if we were going to have our own hacky solution, it >> should at least be implemented as a Gerrit plugin, so that it would at >> least stand a chance of becoming a well-integrated solution. > >> A Bugzilla-based solution would be an ideal replacement for "fixme", >> since fixmes are basically bugs anyway. It would work reasonably well >> for "scaptrap", since they generally imply something that needs to be >> done prior to deployment. It would be an awkward replacement for >> "backcompat" and others. > > Thank you for this detailed e-mail. One thing I think I'm missing is > why the bugzilla-based solution is better than the gerrit plugin one. The Bugzilla-based solution has some of the advantages of the MediaWiki-based solution. We may be able to implement it more quickly than something native to Gerrit because we're already working on Bugzilla integration, and we get features like queries for free, as well as the minor convenience of not having to have a new database table or two to manage. It may be useful for Chad and/or Christian to weigh in on this point. Workflow advantages: * We're already managing Bugzilla (Andre is full-time on it), so managing "tags" is straightforward. * We get all sorts of extra management functions, such as assignee with BZ, whereas "fixme"s, for example, only have an implicit, unchangeable assignee (the committer) > It seems to me that if the tagging functionality was developed as a > gerrit plugin, it would have all the advantages of the bugzilla-based > solution (good integration, etc.) without its drawbacks (awkwardness > for non-bugs tags, e-mail addresses mismatches, dependency on > bugzilla). True. They may not be mutually exclusive, but a question of ordering and priority. A BZ-based solution can potentially be our short-term solution, while we still continue to prod upstream on a better long-term solution. We may also still decide that both features are useful enough to implement them both ourselves. The nice thing about a BZ-based solution is that we will probably still want to keep using it for some things after there's a proper upstream solution. Perhaps we'll also grow attached to a homegrown tagging solution for Gerrit, but it seems less likely we'll want to keep it unless the Gerrit devs never get around to implementing tagging in core. > Admittedly, I'm not a primary user of gerrit, but I've been pondering > the idea of using tags in order to surface noteworthy changes, so they > can be easily listed and communicated about to our users. This would > make it much easier to identify the "most important changes" on pages > like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/wmf7 , and could > also perhaps be used for release notes summaries. > > A bugzilla-based tagging system seems too restrictive for this kind of > use, but perhaps I'm just not seeing how it would work. It's difficult > to predict the kinds of tags people will come up with in the future, > and I feel it would be a pity to develop a tagging solution that > restricts the type of tags you can use with it. I think we probably just need to be accommodating for more uses of Bugzilla than narrowly using it for bugs only. I think these would be perfectly fine to track in Bugzilla. If the problem is with the rigidity of keywords, one thing I should note is that, in addition to tagging, there's also the "whiteboard" in Bugzilla, which I believe you can use for free form stuff to query. I believe Andre only enabled that in recent months, so it may be that it wasn't available the last time you went looking, and is a feature we don't yet use for much (or anything?) Part of why I sent my proposal to the list is because I'm not too wedded to a Bugzilla-based solution. The main things I wanted to check were: 1. Should we tackle Gerrit->Bugzilla bug filing as a higher priority than a Gerrit tagging system? (My original assumption is "yes", but this is the point I'm most malleable on) 2. Is a MediaWiki-based solution with some JS integration to Gerrit acceptable alternative to building a Gerrit-only plugin? (My assumption is "no") Rob _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
