Re: Bug statistics

[Dan Nicolaescu <dann@gnu.org>]

Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>>    4594 reports  [1]
>>    2647 closed reports
>>
>>Amost 2000 bug reports not closed
>>is rather disturbing.
>>
>>    14% have been marked "minor"
>>    20% have been marked "wishlist"
>>    9% are tagged "moreinfo"
>>    5% are tagged "wontfix".
>>
>>That is about 40%.  It seems to imply there are around 1200 bug
>>reports which are not marked in these ways, and not fixed either.
>>Is that true?
>>
>>Can you compute the number of bug reports that are waiting for action
>>by the maintainers?
>
> Percentage of bug reports not closed is not in itself a problem.  It's
> possible that bugs-not-triaged is a problem, but that really depends on
> many things about the project.
>
>   http://ostatic.com/blog/fixing-the-perception-of-bugs
>
> (And yes, I'm quoting someone quoting me in order to give my opinions
> more authority. :-) )
>
> IMHO the poor web interface of our bug tracker is an impediment to
> finding and triaging bugs.  Heck, I can't even find the tracker half the
> time.  If I start at http://gnu.org/software/emacs and click on the link
> to [what is purported to be] the Emacs bug database, I am taken to the
> generic top of the Gnu tracker: http://debbugs.gnu.org/.  Then there is
> a table there, with a row for Emacs.  Since what I want to do is search
> the Emacs bug database, I take the closest option to that, which is the
> "Browse bug reports" column with its cell for "Emacs reports".  Clicking
> on that brings me to:
>
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=emacs;max-bugs=100;base-order=1;bug-rev=1

Although the debbugs UI is far from ideal, do you have any evidence
that is one of the more important problems?

IMO the main problem is man power.

There are >100 bugs with patches attached that have not been applied.
For a lot of these patches there's no obvious maintainer to take care
of them, so one of the maintainers would have to do it.

Same goes about bug reports, quite a few are about areas that nobody
feels particularly attached to, so they don't get any action.