[Python-Dev] OS information, tags

[R. David Murray]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:47:16 +0530, Anand Balachandran Pillai <abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Senthil Kumaran wrote:
> > > On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 07:06:29PM +0530, Anand Balachandran Pillai
> > wrote:
> > >>            I am surprised to see that the bug-tracker
> > >> doesn't have an OS classifier or ability to add
> > >> tags ? Since a number of issues reported seem to
> > >
> > > There is one. In the Components you can do a multiple select and it
> > > has Macintosh , Windows as options.
> >
> 
>  Thanks for pointing that out. I missed it.
> 
>  A problem seems to be that for most bugs, the filer seems to select
>  just one component and leave the rest of it to bug description. When
>  I searched with "Windows" component, the most recent bugs I saw
>  was upto 1 week ago, where as a bug like http://bugs.python.org/issue8384
>  which is a distutils issue reported on Windows is not present, because
>  the reporter chose to file it under "distutils" component.

Well, one generally can't depend on the submitter to get the details
right, because they often aren't familiar with our conventions.  Triage
tries to add those components when appropriate, but sometimes we forget.

The more interesting question is, do any developers search on the
windows/mac components?  My guess would be that we mostly depend on
appropriate people getting set as nosy on bugs, by themselves after
seeing it on the new bugs list, or by triage.

> > I think that setup dates from the Sourceforge days when we didn't have
> > keywords or the ability to add our own fields. Would it make sense to
> > put a request on the metatracker to convert these to keywords now that
> > they're available? Or even a separate OS field with "Windows, Mac OS X,
> > Linux, *BSD, Other" as the options?
> >
> > While there is some Windows and Mac specific code, treating them as
> > separate components seems fairly unintuitive.
> >
> 
>  +1. I don't understand why Windows and Mac should come under
>  "Components". It is not very obvious to the reporters also.

Well, on the flip side, if there were a separate OS list, we'd probably
get a lot of submitters selecting their OS when in fact the bug is
not OS specific.  So I'm not sure the problems would be any smaller
with that approach.

>  Separate question: Who is in charge of bug triaging in pydev ? This is
> something which I would like to help out with, if help is required :-)

As with just about everything else Python, a small, ad hoc team
of volunteers.  There's no one "in charge".  Anyone with 'developer'
privileges on the tracker (which means anyone with commit access, but also
non-committers who have been given it so they can do triage) can do triage.
There are a batch of us that hang out on #python-dev and also monitor the
new bugs and/or the full bugs list, and triage issues as we have time.
If you want to help out, come talk to us on #python-dev (on freenode),
and start reviewing issues and suggesting appropriate status updates.
If you help out, it won't be long before you get tracker 'developer'
privs so you can help out more.

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com