[maemo-community] email address as bugtracker link for non-small projects?

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 18:06, Uwe Kaminski <jukey at ju-key.de> wrote:
> Am 25.08.2010 13:43, schrieb Dave Neary:
>>
>> IMHO, the use of an email address for bug tracking should not be a
>> reason to -1 a project, but certainly maintainers should be encouraged
>> to set up a better bug tracker if they have "rich functionality".
>
> I have to disagree.
>
> As written a few weeks ago at the testingsquad mailing list:
> https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/testingsquad-list/2010-August/000116.html

However the Testing Squad is a group for applying the policy, not
making it. The correct place for the discussion is here.

> there are good reasons for bugtrackers and _against_ mail adresses:
>
>> Beside all technical reasons which make a reporting solution failing...
>> I never would force developers to do something or not.

Except you are?

>> Even if the choice of their preferred way to send bugs is something
>> good for themselves (often) but bad for reporters (email).

There's no evidence that email is bad for *reporters*. In fact, it's
easier: there's no need to check for duplicates. You fire off an email
which says what the steps to reproduce are, what you expected to
happen, what happened and how reproducible it is; along with
environmental information.

>> But here we are talking about the _extras_ repository which _is enabled
>> by default_ on the n900 and it shouldn't be only the decision of the
>> developer what kind of reporting tool is used.
>>
[snip]

However, users using the Extras repository (which is, as you say,
enabled out-of-the-box) are exposed to it through HAM: this makes no
exposure of the bug tracker field. Only if a user goes to
maemo.org/downloads/ will they see the "Report a bug against this
application".

At that point, it reflects badly on the developer if they never
respond to a bug report. Just as it reflects badly on the developer if
the application crashes when you press buttons A, B & C in order
(which may not have been picked up by the QA rules).

The QA criteria are NOT designed to make every single package on
maemo.org excellent. It's purpose is to ensure that maemo.org packages
do not fundamentally damage users' expectations. Not many users will
have expectations of good bug tracking, and so this shouldn't prevent
otherwise good quality packages from getting into Extras.

> Even yesterday I got an email from a developer who wrote that the
> bug in his applications is already known but he does not have time
> to fix it yet. I bet I was the 5. or maybe 10. guy who was mailing
> him. I'm able to understand that people don't have time but that's
> why I also would like to see that developers understand that _I_
> don't have unlimited time too.

Then don't spend ages reporting bugs in applications which have only
email-based mechanisms. Or send a quick mail first and ask if the
developer needs more info.

> As solution for this problem I would love to see a whitelist of projects
> which allow email adresses:

I am strongly against this, for the reasons outlined above. We
shouldn't be putting up *unnecessary* barriers to someone getting
their application into Extras, and this *is* one of those, IMHO.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council chair