Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi,

As a corollary to the upcoming teams approach, should we tag bugs in
Debbugs so that their respective teams can find them?

Kind regards
Felix

Re: Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On mer., 26 avril 2023 at 13:57, Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> wrote:

> As a corollary to the upcoming teams approach, should we tag bugs in
> Debbugs so that their respective teams can find them?

AFAIK, we are not able to change the current Debbugs tags [1] because
they are administrated by GNU sysadmins.  However, indeed we could agree
on some common usertags as mentioned by the manual [2].

What do you have in mind?


1: https://debbugs.gnu.org/Developer.html#tags
2: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Debbugs-Usertags.html


Cheers,
simon

Re: Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Simon,

On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 10:02 AM Simon Tournier
<zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What do you have in mind?

In my recollection of using Debbugs in Debian, which uses a slightly
different version with more features (for example, a SOAP interface)
than the instance provided by GNU.org, there is a feature called "user
tags." They allow anyone to set arbitrary labels. [1]

Personally, I used regular tags frequently when co-maintaining Lintian
in Debian. They were super helpful when dealing with hundreds of bugs.
I therefore thought user tags could be helpful in Guix, especially for
teams. I may not be alone. [2]

We even have a section about them in the Guix manual, although I
haven't seen them being used much. [3]

Kind regards
Felix

[1] See "usertag", https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/doc/debbugs-ug.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-debbugs/2020-08/msg00000.html
[3] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Debbugs-Usertags.html

Re: Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Felix,

Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System
distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Simon,
>
> On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 10:02 AM Simon Tournier
> <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What do you have in mind?
>
> In my recollection of using Debbugs in Debian, which uses a slightly
> different version with more features (for example, a SOAP interface)
> than the instance provided by GNU.org, there is a feature called "user
> tags." They allow anyone to set arbitrary labels. [1]

The GNU Debbugs also has the user tags feature (it's documented in our
manual, as was pointed by Simon).

I haven't found how it's supposed to work exactly, as when adding test
tags to some issues, I can't seem to find them back.  Perhaps you could
teach us how you used them, perhaps improving the doc already mentioning
their usage in the Guix manual?  That'd be cool.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: Greater bug specifics for automatic team assignment

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Simon,

On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 10:02 AM Simon Tournier
<zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> AFAIK, we are not able to change the current Debbugs tags

Alternatively, we could also change the bug "owner". Quoting from the
documentation, "The owner of a bug claims responsibility for fixing
it." [1]

In the context of Guix, teams would have to make sure they are not
offended when unrelated parties set or modify the bug owner. An
assignment to someone else can come across as patronizing—especially
in a ping-pong type situation—but I think that Guix contributors as a
whole have a collective morale that is strong enough to discount any
perceived slights.

With a monorepo, it's all kind of left-pocket/right-pocket, anyway.

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/doc/debbugs-ug.html#Mail-Command-Index