#wg-stable: Reservations about a "STABLE" & "NeedsStable" bugzilla keywords (re: [gentoo-dev] New Working Group established to evaluate the stable tree)

[Kent Fredric]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2016 23:35:58 +0200
Kristian Fiskerstrand <k_f@g.o> wrote:

>  * The b.g.o workflow, bugs should not be considered fixed until the
>    fix has reached the stable tree. Today the InVCS keyword exists for
>    this purpose, but it is used to varying degree amongst developers.
>    Will a workflow change to introduce a new status, e.g RESOLVED
>    NeedsStable (name for illustration purpose only) incentivize
>    developers to not close bugs before it is fixed?

Here you're essentially marking "RESOLVED" to be "Fixed In Stable"

There's a problem I have here with this: If we have a keyword that in effect is
intended to say "This bug is fixed in stable", the problem there is there's no
way, at least, not in the context of the bug, or the bug metadata, to draw
anything meaningful from that.

Because "Stable" is in my estimation typically not a single state.

We like to presume it is, but the reality is a significant number of packages
have "mixed" stability states.

And the stability process itself is also arch specific, and so they don't
all stabilize together, some, languishing by months.

So: "NeedsStable"(sic) means what exactly?

And if "Resolved" is "Stable is done", what does that mean?

Does "NeedsStable" mean "All arches that are deemed stable need to be stabilized
for this bug"?

What about packages that don't have any stable version, and are not anywhere
on a prioritization for stabilization?

What about packages that are stable only on a few arches?

The lack of bugs having an "affected platforms" field as such makes reverse
searching for such things when you're touching a bug needlessly complicated.

You can at best approximate it by searching for cc@ properties, but that only
matters for packages that are *currently* pending keywording.

And I doubt people are going to be CCing arches for every bug that "NeedsStable"

You can I guess create some form of referential integrity, where you have to
assign every bug that gets fixed to a stable request in order to ensure its completion.

But that's getting into problems of causality, needing to assign a stability
request to a bug before stabilization is needed just to determine "which arches"

This sort of stuff makes me feel bugzilla is entirely the wrong platform for
handling stabilizations and keywords :/