polygone
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Posted on: August 12, 2011, 10:42:42 am |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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Just wanted to open a discussion about trackers because I question if the current set-up really the best we can come up with?
Currently things are being posted in multiple places: the enigma tracker, lgm tracker, wiki, docs, forum, irc. This clearly isn't the best way to keep things organised. Any sort of bug tracking system should preferably be all in one place, easily accessible to users, convenient and easy to use, easy for developers to see which problems relate to them and easy to filter so people know what problems exist in which areas.
So I'm opening the floor to suggestions and to see if we can come to some sort of consensus of what should be used.
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« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 10:46:11 am by polygone »
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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polygone
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Reply #1 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 11:20:03 am |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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I'm personally leaning towards the wiki instead of a separate tracker and hopefully mock up some standardized way of handling reports. I see many benefits of using it: - It's very easily accessible, people are naturally logged in (this is currently a large issue I find with the LGM tracker)
- It's quick and easy for someone to jot a bug down, especially useful when wishing to report multiple bugs at once!
- It's location can be easily known by users
- The wiki itself is naturally frequented so people will more regularly see updates
- All reports can be edited by all users (it's currently a major is with ENIGMA's tracker, that you can't even edit your own reports)
- There is flexibility in the organization you can use. People can group together different areas of suggestions easily and this can easily be reorganized by other people also
The main thing to work out would be what sort of organization to use. If and how reports should be separated into different pages, what categorization should be used, how things will be marked so developers know what problems they should deal with.
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« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 11:33:01 am by polygone »
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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IsmAvatar
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Reply #2 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 11:20:47 am |
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LateralGM Developer
Location: Pennsylvania/USA Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 877
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I use Mantis for the LGM tracker because of the features it affords me that Spray sorely lacks - plus Spray has pretty much stopped being developed. I like mantis because it's really descriptive about bugs, letting you know exactly what they affect, what state of fixingness they are in, if they relate to other bugs, and how crippling they are (or if they're a feature request). Unfortunately, this quantity of information also means that it takes a little bit of time to file a bug, so people who encounter a NullPointerException when clicking a button decide to do whatever they were doing through another route rather than fill out the bug form, or they tell me and then I forget. This is where the wiki/forums can came in handy, because it provides people a quick way to report bugs without having to fill out the form. I don't really consider it a non-consensus, just a second backlog of bugs that have yet to be reported on the mantis because people are too lazy to fill out the forms for them. Every now and then, I'll skim through the list, and if I find something important, I'll fill out a mantis bug for it.
LGM preferences: * Mantis: Bug goes here. * Wiki: Can be a good place to quickly post bugs when you can't be assed to fill out the form. Essentially a backlog of bugs that still need to be picked through and transcribed into an actual mantis bug. * Forum: Great for collaboratively discussing ideas or problems. Find out if something is really a bug, and come up with ideas on how to implement something or how to fix a bug. NOT an actual bug report. * IRC: Great for bouncing ideas or errors off me to see if it's just user stupidity or a bug. If you know it's a bug, don't put it here. We'll forget. Occasionally, it's really simple, or something relevant to what we're working on, so we'll be able to fix it real quick - but don't count on it. I forget. End of story. * Spray (when you click the Tracker link at the top of ENIGMA pages): LGM doesn't use this because it is inferior. LGM bugs should be reported elsewhere. * Email: Yeah, no.
Plugin Preferences: Since I'm always working on the plugin, if you find a bug with it (which is hard to do, since it's such a stable and small module, but it does happen), the IRC is sufficient. If I can't get to it, it usually gets logged on the Wiki so I don't forget.
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« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 11:39:29 am by IsmAvatar »
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IsmAvatar
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Reply #3 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 11:49:09 am |
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LateralGM Developer
Location: Pennsylvania/USA Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 877
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My response was before you mentioned a preference towards the wiki, so now I'm responding to that. I think it could be made to work. All the detailed information about a bug could be filled in as it becomes available, meaning that you can either file a quick bug or a detailed bug. The big issue would be figuring out how to get a good overview of the bugs. I mean, it's going to be one of the following: * Every bug listed on one page under categorical headers. This quickly becomes unmaintainable. Can't fill in significant details about the bug. Have to page down several times reading each bug to get to a specific one. Obviously this is not the way it would be done. Maybe just for quick backlog bugs for when there's not enough info to start a new bug page. * Every bug has its own page. This is great, but then we have the issue of where the central database of these bugs is. How do I see what bugs there are? It would have to be one or more of the following: ** Bug Category. Lists all the bugs (or at least the ones that bothered to use the {{bug}} tag). Unfortunately, it only lists them as page names in alphabetical order. There is no indication of their status, etc. ** Bug Categories. Different category tags for different states of bugs. But usually I like to see all the bugs together, and be able to filter out, say, the closed bugs. If I'm looking for a specific bug, I probably won't remember what state it's in, except that it's not closed, because they're changing states all the time. ** Maintained List/Table. This isn't going to happen unless you write a bot to do it. Basically, I want this: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/lateralgm/view_all_bug_page.phpand this: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/lateralgm/view.php?id=24
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polygone
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Reply #4 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 12:02:34 pm |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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Maybe we should have a two stage system. It seems to me that for a general user it would be easier and better to use the wiki system in order to report bugs, I feel a lot of users will not know how to fill in a tracker report as desired by a developer and this may actually also deter them from doing so.
Then like you said the reports on the wiki can be used by scooped up by developers then if desired posted on their own tracker which they are familiar with, like to use, can fill in properly and to give themselves more details on the bug. The main problem that may arise from this is the loss of information from one report system to the other so I developer would ideally keep the wiki reports up-to-date if they are themselves using a separate tracker. Although tracker references could also be posted on the wiki (or even reports could be made into urls which go to the corresponding tracker report).
EDIT: I see you posted while I was, I will respond to your post in a minute.
OK I think this is where my above suggestion would come in. I think all bugs could be categorised on single pages under headers, then bugs could be externally referenced to trackers if wanted. Reports can be removed on the wiki when they have been resolved so it should hopefully not become over populated.
I personally feel you are actually in a minority here Ism. Josh doesn't seem to care about the tracker (and this has been shown in the past will it often becoming out of date) I think he would be able to just happily use the wiki reports which others can help maintain. I feel users like TGMG or me are more drawn to the wiki style as we can mass report at once. And for new members or the common irc user that can be too lazy or do not know exactly how to make a proper report the wiki will be more appealing as well. Although I am also drawn to the organization of a tracker but these may actually be best run separately and solely by developers anyway so they can be kept properly documented.
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« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 12:55:09 pm by polygone »
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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polygone
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Reply #6 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 01:45:11 pm |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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Just be aware that I usually try to address Mantis bugs first unless they're really trivial things that I agree with.
Well with this proposal people won't be posting on the Mantis, they will be posting on the wiki. Then you can then keep the mantis categorised how you like. I'll see what some other people think, then think about how to wiki could be set-up.
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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polygone
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Reply #7 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 04:25:01 pm |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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Actually I'm starting to have second thoughts about the wiki hmm. Because there will be an issue when developers need to respond and get more info from a report, users will not easily be able to see that the report has been responded to.
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« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 04:27:08 pm by polygone »
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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Josh @ Dreamland
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Reply #8 Posted on: August 12, 2011, 10:33:48 pm |
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Prince of all Goldfish
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 2950
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I like having a separate tracker because it's just a more direct/deliberate way of dealing with bugs. It's not cluttering anything; you can view closed/complete/postponed bug tickets and such, and the presentation is much better organized than a categories page.
I would like more unity between the trackers of the two projects, but... Perhaps Ism and I could coordinate something to allow posting to the LGM mantis with ENIGMA credentials?
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"That is the single most cryptic piece of code I have ever seen." -Master PobbleWobble "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Friends of Voltaire
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polygone
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Reply #9 Posted on: August 13, 2011, 07:20:23 am |
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Location: England Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 794
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I'm starting to see that trackers are probably better to use. But what I am thinking is that they should not be used for suggestions only bug reports. Suggestions seem a lot better posted on the wiki and also the forum if they need discussion.
There are still currently issues with the trackers though. LGM and ENIGMA's tracker being separate is not good, not as many people know about LGM's tracker and it isn't frequented, there is also the issue with log-ins. And bugspray still has many needed features missing, also note that things like TGMG's reports on his docs should all be posted on bugspray but they've just been left there.
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I honestly don't know wtf I'm talking about but hopefully I can muddle my way through.
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Josh @ Dreamland
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Reply #11 Posted on: August 13, 2011, 12:10:53 pm |
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Prince of all Goldfish
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 2950
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A dedicated server isn't going to happen at this juncture. I average $75 a year in income from the ads on the front page. That average is decreasing.
We can move to a VPS if we (the team) can settle on a good priced one. I was thinking that one daz had for $13/mo would do the trick.
We are far too low-traffic to generate the need and much less the income for a better host than that VPS.
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"That is the single most cryptic piece of code I have ever seen." -Master PobbleWobble "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Friends of Voltaire
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