[Asterisk-Dev] Features requests on bugs.digium.com

[Steve Kann]

On Dec 29, 2004, at 9:50 PM, Brian West wrote:

> Ok I think all feature requests need to be gone from 
> bugs.digium.com... if
> it has a patch it should be ok.  But feature requests I don't think 
> should
> be on the "bug" tracker.  It is a bug tracker right?
>
> So we can focus... what do you think... all raise your hands if the bug
> tracker should only be for bugs and bugs with patches, or new features 
> with
> patches...?
>

I think the bug tracker should be for any proposed change to asterisk, 
be it a new feature, enhancement, bugfix or whatever, whether or not it 
has a patch attached.  It really ought to be the central location where 
all projects are discussed and planned.

To be honest, I think you all are way too closed happy with the bug 
tracker.  Maybe the goal was just to make it a place to organize 
incoming patches, and I guess that's better than not having such a 
place, but there ought to also be a place for documenting progress and 
design before there's C code to commit to CVS.

Take a look at any other open source project, and you'll see their bug 
systems are used for feature requests, ideas, etc.

For example, there was a bug in there that steve davies opened for the 
new jitterbuffer, but nobody posted to it for a few days (maybe even 
weeks), and it got closed.   Closed should happen for things you don't 
ever intend to do, not just things that you aren't working on RIGHT 
NOW.  I didn't open it in the first place, but I can't comment on it 
now, re-open it, or anything.   (actually, I think you ought to be able 
to comment on closed bugs also; without re-opening them;  As an 
example, I posted a patch for something, mark committed it, and closed 
it, but I did want to comment on open issues, at least to respond to 
his comment, if only for the record when someone refers to the bug 
based on a CVS log or something..).

I really, really, think that any project that people plan on working on 
ever, or even projects that people think would be a good idea 
_eventually_, should be documented there.

There certainly should be a way to discriminate between things that 
people are actively working on (that's pretty easy, actually, because 
the default sort does that), and things that are not.

Most especially, it should be easy to find bugs that need a particular 
person (or group's) attention:  i.e. needs review, needs to be 
committed, etc.

I think it would be useful to take a look at mozilla.org's model;  They 
have a much larger community working together using bugzilla to track 
everything, and I think the model is good.

My 2c.

-SteveK