[plt-dev] Bug reports

Why change? Gnats is great.


On Feb 23, 2010, at 11:05 AM, Robby Findler wrote:

> From our last discussion, I had the impression that launchpad would
> work, but it would require us to have a server that served as an
> intermediary for bug reports coming from drscheme.
>
> I'm also willing to help a little with this, but I don't have time to
> be in charge of it.
>
> Robby
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Matthias Felleisen
> <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Stick!
>>
>> On Feb 23, 2010, at 9:42 AM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>>
>>> I've recently looked at some of the capabilities of bug reports on
>>> various hosted places.
>>>
>>> * One appealing feature is using github (since we'll have a mirror
>>>  there), but it doesn't look like it allows generating reports from
>>>  emails or some way to generate reports anonymously (perhaps using
>>>  the api, but this complicates things).  Also, it doesn't look like
>>>  you can get email notifications, and no attachements.  And another
>>>  problem is that people need to create accounts there instead of
>>>  managing it from a central place.
>>>
>>> * Most other similar places are similarly limited (launchpad does  
>>> have
>>>  attachements, but is limited in a similar way).
>>>
>>> * The most promising thing that I've seen is a pair of websites:
>>>  tenderapp.com and lighthouse.com.  IIUC, the intention of the  
>>> former
>>>  is as a front end for users to post "issues", and for the latter to
>>>  be dealing with more concrete bug reports.  The interfaces fr both
>>>  are similarly polished, but there are some differences: the first
>>>  can accept new reports from anyone (no login needed), and the  
>>> second
>>>  has more of the usual stuff you expect a bug report tool to have.
>>>  In addition, the second one can be integrated with a repository:
>>>  accepting keywords in emails that can do almost anything (close
>>>  bugs, assign them, etc).
>>>
>>>  For companies, I think that the intention is for some QA department
>>>  to deal with the first and file bugs against the second (with a way
>>>  to link the two).  The main problem with using only lighthouse that
>>>  I see is that bugs cannot be filed by unregistered users -- it is
>>>  possible to send an email that is coming from a registered user
>>>  (eg "bugs at plt-scheme.org") and have that create a report, but then
>>>  the bug seems to come from that address and I don't see a way to CC
>>>  the real bug reporter.
>>>
>>> In any case, I can't really allocate more time for this.  I was  
>>> hoping
>>> that Sam, being the most vocal about how gnats is ancient, would  
>>> take
>>> it on, but he's not interested.
>>>
>>> So, in case someone wants to look further into these options, and
>>> either find a way to make one of them do what we need, or find  
>>> another
>>> option that does that, or even play with gnats itself to make it do
>>> the extra things that these tools do: please contact me and I'll  
>>> tell
>>> you what the basic requirements are, and I'll help in finding a  
>>> way to
>>> migrate the current bug DB.  Otherwise, it looks like sticking with
>>> the current setup is the most profitable.
>>>
>>> (This is not an attempt at starting a discussion about these things,
>>> I've spent enough time trying to figure them out...)
>>>
>>> --         ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli  
>>> Barzilay:
>>>                   http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is  
>>> Life!
>>> _________________________________________________
>>>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>>>  http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
>>
>> _________________________________________________
>>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>>  http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
>>