[gentoo-user] Number of open Bugzilla bugs (Was: Question about gentoo-sources kernel release versions)

[Michael Jones]

On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 5:43 PM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> Bugs get closed all the time.  Bugs also get opened and and linger all
> the time.  I couldn't tell you the ratio, but that is the nature of
> things.
>
> If you don't report an issue, and nobody else is aware of it, I can
> pretty much guarantee that nobody will fix it.  If you do report an
> issue it might or might not get fixed.  That's the nature of the
> beast.


Or in my case, I sometimes post 1-line pull requests to the Gentoo github,
which fix packages being unable to compile, which get rejected because I
didn't jump through enough hoops, and the bug remains unfixed for over a
year after I open the PR. I stopped posting PRs after that, since it's a
waste of my time.

Or I post patches to Bugzilla for some package, the Gentoo maintainer
agrees to accept them after Upstream reviews it, and upstream takes 3 years
to review, with dead mailing list during that 3 year period.

On the flip side, I regularly see issues get fixed between when I notice
the issue, and the issue is reported (by myself in many cases) on Bugzilla.

I'm not attempting to be contradictory for the sake of being contradictory,
but the situation is significantly more complicated than what you said, but
English is imprecise, so I understand that you're aware of these things.

Filing bugs, or patches, or PRs, or instructions for fixing, or even
attempting to get fixes into the appropriate upstream project, regularly
results in no outcome for me at all. Neither positive or negative. Just
nothing.

Add to that, Gentoo has *so many bugs* that your bug tracking software,
when told to simply "Give me all of the bugs" refuses to actually do so.

Why should I continue opening new bugs, (or even better, provide patches)
when I have new problems?

I don't see the problem as Gentoo not knowing that there are issues that
should be tracked. I see it as a problem of Gentoo can't engage with it's
user community in an effective way. And I see having over 10,000 open bugs
as one of the barriers between effective user engagement and what we have
today.


> Honestly, I'm not sure how having bots beg bug reporters about letting
> their bugs be closed relentlessly (albeit at a very slow rate) until
> they finally stop responding is going to improve things.  Somebody
> reports an issue and is frustrated that nobody does anything about it.
>

Is there ever a time cutoff, after which a bug should automatically be
closed, in your opinion?

I thought my proposal of a single reminder email after 5 years, and then
auto-close after 10 years, was reasonable.

Is 10 years for the reminder email, and 20 for the auto-close better?

Surely if something hasn't been addressed in 20 years, it won't be?


> Will reminding them that we didn't do anything about it in 5-10 years
> improve how they feel about the issue?  If they reply that it still is
> an issue, will it help that we reply again in another 5 years to ask
> if it is still an issue help?


Yes, it will improve how I feel about it.

Either:
1. The bug hasn't been acted on in the previous 5 years on bugzilla, but
maybe it's been fixed and the original reporter / developer forgot to do
anything in bugzilla about it. Or no one realized it was fixed. This kind
of thing happens all the time.
2. The maintainer of the package in question failed to address the problem,
even to acknowledge the problems existence, in the preceding 5 years. Maybe
it fell through the cracks? Maybe it's being deliberately ignored?
Computers can do things for us automatically, like remind people about
things.


> It seems like picking at a scab when the only people paying attention to a
> bug are the reporter and a bot.
>

A scab that's failed to heal in 5 years is a pretty serious injury.


> My gut feeling is that this sort of thing will make people even less
> likely to report new bugs they find, because they're constantly being
> reminded of ancient situations where this turned out to be a waste of
> time.  If they weren't reminded of this they'd be more likely to
> report an issue, and that might or might not be a waste of time.
>

So stop making it a waste of people's time?

You're reaction to this suggestion gives me the impression that Gentoo, as
a project, considers it to be just fine for issues to be completely
untouched for a decade, no acknowledgment, no action.

Do you think that's fine? Or not? I just want to make sure I fully
understand your point of view.

Personally, I don't. But I'm not a Gentoo developer, so *shrug*.

Obviously everybody would prefer that all bugs get fixed promptly.
> Short of that, I'm not sure that automatically closing the bugs is an
> improvement on what currently happens.  But, it probably wouldn't
> personally offend me if old bugs were closed.  It just means that if
> somebody does pick up that package and starts maintaining it again and
> are cleaning things up, they might not fix some lingering issue that
> they aren't aware of with it.
>
> --
> Rich
>
>