[Python-Dev] Goodbye

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/23/2010 3:18 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:

> I personally think that the tracker fields and how they should be set is
> of minor importance.

As of just now, if you were to wonder "What (security) bugs are open for 
2.5" and search on open 2.5 issues, you would get a list of 44 issues. 
It is only 44 instead of hundreds because of the work I and Mark have 
done in the last 4 months. It it 44 instead of perhaps 5 because Tarek 
and Eric insist on marking all disutils2 issues for all versions even 
though though these issues have nothing to do with maintenance releases. 
It is a real nuisance when trying to do tracker cleanup.

Trying to do searches in databases with inaccurate key data is a pain.

> If there is a bug in Python, the most useful
> contribution is to submit a fix (or provide a rationale why this is not
> a bug).

Agreed,at least abstractly, with applying a fix a close second. That 
does not mean that other activities are useless.

However, there are currently 1034 issues with the patch keyword set and 
perhaps others with pacthes. So I think one can legitimately ask whether 
adding more *new* patches, to possibly sit unreviewed for years, is the 
most useful contribution at the moment.

In any case, asking whether a patch submitted for 2.5 (and now 2.6) is 
relevant to future maintenance releases amounts to suggesting that is 
may not be a bug for current purposes. Certainly, anyone fixing a bug 
for 2.7 should also know whether or not it is also a 3.x bug.

 > Asking every now and then "is this still an issue", or setting
> the version number, doesn't really advance the issue.

Numerous issues have been advanced by the questions I and Mark have 
asked. Some were legitimately closed as out of date (the bug reported 
for 2.4/5/6 had already been fixed). Others were closed as fixed when 
someone committed something. The fact that Mark got over-zealous in 
closing issues too soon does not negate this. Some of our questions were 
more specific, and asking questions was not the only things we did. I 
tested some old reports against 3.1 and I believe Mark also did some 
testing himself.

Setting Versions properly helps anyone searching for issues relevant to 
a particular version. If having a field set properly does not matter, 
then is should not be there. Are you suggesting that Versions be deleted?

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy