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

[Darren Nickerson]

"Josh Roberson" <twisted at indigent-networks.com> wrote:

> I can see your point here, and I agree, most people don't want to do the 
> administrative grunt work.  I think what needs to happen, since I've seen 
> a lot of viewpoints that seem to match yours, is we need more people who's 
> specific job is to handle the feature requests then.  Would you like to 
> volunteer? ;)

I think my point is that _nobody_ will ever manage feature requests in any 
concerted way, and that this is OK. There needs to be a way for someone to 
'freshen' an issue if they hang working code on it though, ... because it 
can become commit-worthy at that point. In the HylaFAX project, we will 
often see feature requests being discussed on the -devel list when they're 
that 'imminent', but I can see that Asterisk will necessarily have many many 
more (possibly orders of magnitude more) feature requests since it's 
evolving so rapidly, and that approach won't scale. Like Kevin who posted a 
moment ago, I've never encountered a developer community that does most of 
its work in non-public channels that generate no historical record (IAX 
conferences or IRC), or that berates people for contributing in the "wrong" 
way, so I'm not entirely sure how feature requestors will get the attention 
of the appropriate people without getting beaten up. I think categorizing 
them in Mantis as feature requests is still the way to go though, all one 
needs to sort out is the "path to commitment", so that this is not a 
graveyard.

> I completely agree with this.  I wouldn't see a repository for feature 
> requests/enhancements as a graveyard - meerly another locaiton for 
> advancement, and our current system as a place where you bring your bugs, 
> and resolutions to bugs.   Perhaps we SHOULD look into a better method of 
> bugtracking, perhaps, a new system (not mantis).  Got any suggestions?

I'm afraid my experience is limited to bugzilla. Mantis seems much more 
fully featured, and you seem to be making good use of its capabilities 
already. Like I said, it seems to me that the category of feature request, 
which is presently being used, makes this a non-issue as long as it's deemed 
OK for them to stay there and there's _some_ path for them to be committed 
when working code is there (and Mark deems it commit-worthy).

> This was a very good thing.   I also feel that an outside system from the 
> bugtracker for feature requests and feature patches would still give that 
> place to find things to do on a rainy day.  In fact, I think it might even 
> be a more encouraging place, since it would be devoted completely to 
> enhancements and feature additions.

I understand your desire to separate them, but I think Mantis already does 
that sufficiently well (as long as things are triaged correctly when they 
come in).

-Darren