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

Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> 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.
>

If the crud isn't handled some way then the system isn't nearly as much
use to you. That's why I believe some sort of process for keeping the
bug tracking system reasonably clean is necessary.

cheers

andrew