Bugzilla [LWN.net]

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 17:13 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: Development process issues by gerv
Parent article: Development process issues

It would have been kind of hard to invite the Bugzilla developers to an unplanned discussion that came up spontaneously.

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Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 17:24 UTC (Mon) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (5 responses)

But no-one said "Hey, if we have these problems, why not file bug reports, or ask the authors of the software about them"?

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 20:34 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (4 responses)

Did you see "the [Kernel] Bugzilla used to have better email integration, but that was lost in an upgrade"? That seems like a great place to start!

Why not file bug reports you ask? Because that takes effort and often results in yet-another-ignored-bug. For some projects, it just isn't a good use of time. I don't know how responsive the Bugzilla team is now but I sure felt that way back in the mid-2000s.

Also, I must say, trying to browse https://bugzilla.mozilla.org for Bugzilla issues is just exhausting. Why is it always forgetting the product I'm interested in, even if I just click a tab? Why is it that producing useful results always seems to require filling out a giant HTML form with absurdly large select lists? Why is it that the results never seem to be ordered by relevancy so I'm always scrolling and paging?

Sorry, that got a little long. Hope it helps answer the question though?

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 20:49 UTC (Mon) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why is it that producing useful results always seems to require filling out a giant HTML form with absurdly large select lists?

Have you seen the quicksearch feature (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=quicksearch.html)? It took me years to discover that existed, but it seems a lot less painful than the advanced search form - you can type in stuff like "ALL product:bugzilla summary:email creation_ts>=-1y" and do reasonably complicated queries.

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 22:28 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Thanks! I haven't used Bugzilla much in the past 8 years (so I feel a little sheepish even taking part in this discussion) but I'll remember that.

Looks like typeahead completion would be a great feature there.

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 21:15 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why not file bug reports you ask? Because that takes effort and often results in yet-another-ignored-bug. For some projects, it just isn't a good use of time.

That's a particularly ironic statement to make in a discussion about possibly requiring the creation of tickets in order to submit patches to Linux.

Just saying...

Bugzilla

Posted Nov 7, 2016 22:23 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I like it. But there's a difference... If you already wrote the patch, creating a ticket for it shouldn't take more than an hour of writing (and probably a lot less). Doesn't seem like too a big a deal for the stable kernel series.

Isolating, checking for dupes, and filing new issues requires quite a bit more effort.

Filing an issue on the Kernel Bugzilla is probably even more likely to be ignored than on Bugzilla's Bugzilla. There's some irony or mild hypocrisy there too! But I think the Bugzilla teams can take care of it.