TODO

[Russ Allbery]

Forrest J Cavalier <mibsoft at epix.net> writes:

> I'd like to see Jeffrey and Russ and all inn-workers continue to build
> on recent momentum!

Yeah, me too.  *grin*

> What are people's opinions on bug tracking software in open source
> projects?

I've never actually used bug tracking software.  I'd like to get some
experience with it.  I've never gotten past the difficulty with setting
the thing up and the usually clunky web interfaces to try to really use a
bug tracking package.  (I've only used ticket-handling packages of the
help-desk type, which are related but dissimilar.  I've written my own
package there, but it's not suitable to being used as a bug tracking
package.)

> Under what conditions do they start to help?  There are 131 items in
> INN's TODO, with more in the NNTP compliance list.

Yeah, that could probably benefit from a bug tracking system.  I suppose
it's mostly a matter of us developers wrapping our mind around the bug
tracking system as a way of recording such things.

> I took the INN TODO list and imported it into the system I use for
> software action item tracking.  The output is categorized, grouped, and
> sorted, and displayed in a table.  I think it gives a clearer picture of
> what is on the list that way:

>      http://www.mibsoftware.com/userkt/inn/dev/inntodo.htm

Yeah, you're right, I think that does.

> That table was generated using my own HTML/HTTP wrappers around a
> slightly customized GNATS 4.0. [1] If you think it will be a help and
> not a hindrance, I can set up this issues tracking system for INN at no
> charge (and probably host it, if needed.)

> Can something like this help INN?

I think it could.  It would probably at least be worth a shot.

My immediate instinct would be to start off with a bug tracking system
that only the maintainers can insert bugs into rather than trying to go to
any sort of system that allows users to create bugs, since otherwise I
think the maintainers would have to do quite a lot of filtering to keep
the list down to just the things that they want to deal with (and removing
of irreproducible bugs and bugs without enough information and other
similar matters).

I have no real experience with bug tracking systems, but I'd be willing to
give it a shot.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>