[ python-Bugs-964703 ] RFE versus Bug group Feature Request

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Bugs item #964703, was opened at 2004-06-01 22:14
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by tjreedy
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Category: None
Group: 3rd Party
Status: Closed
Resolution: Wont Fix
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Terry J. Reedy (tjreedy)
Assigned to: Tim Peters (tim_one)
Summary: RFE versus Bug group Feature Request

Initial Comment:
The Category is 'Source Forge Item Tracker'.  The 
possible bug is the redundancy of having both an RFE 
(Request For Enhancement) list separate from the Bugs 
list and a Feature Request Group within Bugs.  Is this 
intentional or an historical artifact that should be 
removed in order to direct feature requests one place or 
another.

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>Comment By: Terry J. Reedy (tjreedy)
Date: 2004-06-05 10:37

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loewis: I currently interprete your advice to me as "Yes, 
encourage movement of RFEs to the RFE list so I can focus 
on real bugs" rather than "No, leave them so I can reward 
queue jumpers with attention I would not otherwise give". ;-)

There are people who *have* read and responded to RFEs 
(about half have been closed).  Even those rejected usually 
get more explanation than simply "Not a bug" 

all: I agree that a tracker that we can modify with experience 
to make review and response easier would be great.  I agree 
with fdrake about patch confusion.  I think there should 
either be no separate patch list (but a way to pull out items 
with an open patch), or all patches should be on a separate 
patch list, but linked to a discussion-only item.  I'd like a way 
to select boilerplate responses and check off the presence of 
required patch features.


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Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2004-06-05 02:45

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fdrake: I deal with the RFE tracker by never (or very
infrequently) looking at it. If Python has 700 bugs, and 250
unreviewed patches, I'm not going to implement features that
people have requested just because they requested them. So I
would be happy if the RFE tracker grew to 700 items, if the
bugs tracker shrank to 150 entries simultaneously. Only at
that point I will wonder what to do next, and look at RFEs.

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Comment By: Guido van Rossum (gvanrossum)
Date: 2004-06-04 20:10

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We should switch to RoundUp on python.org. A single unified
tracker that we can modify. Grr.

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Comment By: Fred L. Drake, Jr. (fdrake)
Date: 2004-06-04 17:58

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I will note that not everyone agrees on this.  Having to
look in multiple trackers is quite painful as well.

The separation of the RFE tracker would be less of a problem
if there were no "patches" tracker; a patch should be
attached to a bug report or to a feature request, not separate.

Grr.

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Comment By: Terry J. Reedy (tjreedy)
Date: 2004-06-04 17:30

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Thanks for the clear directive.

A thought for feature requesters: Conflicts between promise 
(the References) and performance (the CPython 
implementation) are clearly bugs.  So to are sufficiently 
muddled docs.  While a 'missing' feature might look like a bug 
to one who wants it, it might not to a developer looking to 
prune a bloated bug list (>700 today, about double what it 
was not too long ago.)  On the other hand, a feature request 
in the smaller RFE list is only competing with other feature 
requests instead of sometimes serious bugs.


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Comment By: Tim Peters (tim_one)
Date: 2004-06-02 01:00

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Oh yes!  Overall, we'd rather reduce the mushrooming backlog 
of patch and bug reports than slam in new features, so we 
want to keep feature requests out of the bug tracker.  That's 
why the RFE tracker was added.

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Comment By: Terry J. Reedy (tjreedy)
Date: 2004-06-02 00:26

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In the meanwhile...
is it appropriate to recommend that requests go in RFE (as I 
somewhat ignorantly and indirectly did today, see #960325) 
or is this a "don't care" issue for the developers (that I should 
ignore)?

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Comment By: Tim Peters (tim_one)
Date: 2004-06-01 22:22

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Sorry, we can't do anything about this.  Group names cannot 
be deleted in SourceForge's system, and can't even be 
renamed.  So we'll have a "Feature Request" Group in the 
Bugs tracker forever -- or unless SF changes their system.

When we first moved to SF, RFE trackers didn't exist.  That's 
why Bugs grew a Feature Request group to begin with.

Closing as 3rdParty, WontFix.

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