Re: Bugzilla and build bugs

["Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at systemhalted dot org>]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Roland McGrath <roland@hack.frob.com> wrote:
> I don't entirely agree, though I don't object to some change here.

Thank you for being honest.

> But first, I must object to your summarily drawing conclusions and
> implementing them, especially on subjects in which I was originally
> involved, without waiting for feedback from me. ?I was out sick the last
> two days of last week, and then there was a long weekend for US workers,
> but you'd chosen an outcome to this discussion and implemented it before
> I even caught up on the email backlog--in fact, before there had even been
> a single workday in the US. ?That's not collaboration. ?It renders raising
> the subject for debate at all nothing more than tokenism. ?I think you
> already know better, so please act like it.

It was not my intent to offend, and I definitely appreciate your
expression of interest.

I'll ensure I provide more time before acting on a particular
suggestion.

I'm also a reasonable person, and anything done in the name of
experimentation can also be undone just as easily.

> A significant motivation for this policy was to avoid useless clutter in
> the bug database, adding to the load of anyone attempting to process real
> bug reports. ?As long as we still have no actual process for bugzilla
> triage and no team of volunteers performing it, this remains a concern.

Agreed.

> Bugzilla is not really appropriate for any kind of bug that is introduced
> between releases and reported before the next release. ?The only people who
> should be affected by those are the developers, and they should discuss on
> the development mailing lists (or just fix things themselves, when trivial).

I disagree. So have others, and I agree with their reasoning.

> The most common complaints about building are from clueless users. ?We
> should do whatever we can to get anyone who is not well-versed in glibc
> issues to start out with posting to the libc-help mailing list for help.
> That's what it's there for. ?People subscribed to that list have explicitly
> volunteered to help educate neophyte users. ?Even if we had a coherent team
> of bugzilla triage volunteers, as I hope we will get, what those people
> will have volunteered for is to help the developers by managing and
> refining the bug queues, not necessarily to hold the hands of clueless
> users.

I'm on the CC of build issues *specifically* so I can help neophyte users
in any way that I can. If that means moving them *out* of bugzilla into
libc-help, then so be it, but I still want to accept bug reports.

> I think the issue of testsuite failures is a separate one worthy of its
> own separate discussion.

Agreed.

Cheers,
Carlos.