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Up Topic Development / Developer's Corner / Bugtracker a mess?
- - By Newton [th] Date 2013-11-07 11:42 Edited 2013-11-07 11:52
I always have the impression that the bugtracker is a huge mess. So many issues, so many of them unresolved and no idea where to start when trying to solve them. It is so stuffed to the point that I double-think if I really entry another bug with so many other bugs flying around. Of course this is nonsense.

If there is a bug, it must be put into the bugtracker. And if the software is not able to display the bugs in a clear manner, then maybe we should change the software.
But wait, on second thought, is it the software? While searching for other software I noticed that Mantis actually has many features that would enable us to keep better track of the important tickets, we just don't use them.

What is relevant?



I can understand now why many other bugtrackers (namely Bugzilla, The Bug Genie) refuse to show the user a list of open bugs as a welcome on the home page: There might be many tickets, but much less are relevant or urgent. Others shouldn't be forgotten.

So, how can we classify the bugs to have a better overview over where an action is necessary and where not? I have some suggestions:

Use the other bug statuses

Currently we only really use New, Assigned, Resolved. From now on, lets use it more like it was intended by Mantis to have a better classification (Cursive: new statuses).

+ New - All incoming bugs/tickets

+ Feedback - Issues where we are awaiting some reply or additional information from the reporter

+ Acknowleged - Issue can be reproduced/the problem is clarified

+ Confirmed - Issues were enough information is supplied that the (root) problem is clear and that a way how to solve this has been agreed upon, so we can just begin to work on the bug. For feature (requests): Yes, will be done. So these bugs are ready-to-be-solved.

+ Assigned - Assignee is working on it

+ Closed - Issues that are done for good: Resolved for an update that has been released. (The default filter doesn't show these issues)

I already closed all those resolved issues that were fixed prior to the current stable 3.3. So all the resolved and not closed tickets now are either fixed for 4.0 or 3.3. The additional statuses also remove the notion that you have to either take on the issue (or plan to do it) by assigning it to you or don't do anything at all because you don't really understand the problem: The process of finding what the actual problem is is reflected by feedback, acknowledged and confirmed. So you can help to clear up an issue and bring it closer to being resolved.

Importance

Well, first of all there is the Priority field. Can you edit it as a developer?

We need a clear distinction between bugs and {feature requests + personal todos + change requests + performance problems + feature tickets}
Bugs should be trivial, minor, major, crash and block while the second category can be tagged as feature requests or tweaks.

We pretty much do it like this already now, I just wanted to note here that this can be used to filter/order the issues.

Versions and Roadmap

There are three fields that perhaps need an explanation:

+ Version - The openclonk version in which the problem was observed. If you use a development snapshot, don't specify this but note it in the description.

+ Target Version - The openclonk version for which this must be fixed or done. This can be used for feature tickets as well (e.g. "texture the inventor's lab"). Tickets with a target version specified are displayed on the roadmap page.

+ Fixed in - If you resolve a bug, you should specify which is the release version in which the fix will appear. You can leave this empty if this bug wasn't even reported originating from a release version

Opinions?



I added the "Compact" filter in the bug view that hides resolved issues, issues assigned to other people (those tickets shouldn't be assigned for years but only when he is working on it or will be in the next time), hides feature requests and orders by priority.

Do you have any other suggestions how to make the bugtracker more organized, how we could work with it better?
Parent - - By Sven2 [de] Date 2013-11-07 12:14

> Do you have any other suggestions how to make the bugtracker more organized, how we could work with it better?


Fix the bugs?

We haven't done a release with a bugfixing spree in a long time. That's why bugs started to pile up.

Also, there needs to be some state or category for feature requests (and sometimes even bug reports) that are legit, but will take a lot of time and effort to implement. I wouldn't want to lose the entries (by closing them), but they should be way down on the list because those tend to pile up. Can this be done with priorities?
Parent - - By Newton [th] Date 2013-11-07 14:51
You can give those tickets priority low or none (lower than low). If you sort by priority they'd appear on the bottom of the list. In Mantis, the filtering and sorting is somewhat limited however, at least when you once used Jira. I wonder how TBG performs there.

>fix the bugs


What, all of them? Are you talking about a possible 3.4 update or a new release? By the way, October through February is classically the time of clonk meetings and of new releases. Anything in focus?
Parent - By Maikel Date 2013-11-07 14:57
New release will be hard with so many ongoing projects: effects, controls, new graphics, league, shader?

I'd like to finish them all and release something good. However, we do have a nice new set of scenarios which people barely play, cause they are not on release.

Meetings: I heard some rumours about between new years and Christmas.
Parent - By Isilkor Date 2013-11-07 15:01

> at least when you once used Jira.


The machine that's running crucible is, oddly enough, named "jira" (because I considered using that too then discarded the idea since people seemed happy with Mantis (and I don't currently have enough spare RAM to run another Java application on there anyway)).
Reply
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2013-11-07 14:38
Thanks for summarizing and cleaning up! I'd wish I would not have gotten 60 Notification emails :D How can one disable all emails from Mantis.

I agree with everything you say here: is there a way to show the basic concepts to people who report a bug?

And also does your clean up mean we stick with mantis?
Parent - By Newton [th] Date 2013-11-07 14:56
No, still evaluating. The cleanup also makes sense for preparing an export. It'd be good to know how to keep it organized in TBG and whether/how it is superior. I got so few feedback from you guys.
Parent - - By Isilkor Date 2013-11-07 17:19

> I'd wish I would not have gotten 60 Notification emails :D


Turn off "E-mail on Closed" in My account -> Preferences
Reply
Parent - By Maikel Date 2013-11-07 17:50
That has been off for more than 2 years now.
Up Topic Development / Developer's Corner / Bugtracker a mess?

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