Re: BugTracker (Was: Re: 8.2 features status)

On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 07:05:17PM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > I've yet to see a bug tracker that doesn't make it trivial to
> > identify bugs that were marked as invalid (ie: not a real
> > bug). The only difference is that you actually have to mark
> Well, if it's invalid, it shouldn't be in there. But I guess you could
> just go ahead and delete it at that point - but it's work that someone
> has to do.
>
> But when I look at a lot of OSS projects out there, I see hundreds (if
> not thousands or tens of thousands for large projects) of bugs that are
> just dangling. That likely aren't bugs, but they are listed as such.
> Could definitly be that it's just that the system isn't maintained
> properly, but if so many others have failed, there's definitly a
> nontrivial risk that we would fail as well.

I always see people getting bent out-of-shape about bug trackers that
contain a lot of invalid bug reports and I never understand why. Most of
the ones I've seen hide those by default, so it's not like you really
have to deal with them. And having them still exist is useful... for
example, if you keep seeing the same thing come up over and over you
know there's probably an issue of some kind (ie: documentation). Plus,
if users are encouraged to search for the bug they found before
reporting it and *that* search by default includes invalid bugs then
it's more likely that the user will find the question (and answer)
themselves.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461