Re: Reporting bugs and notifying maintainers (bugs mailing list?)

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 08:08:03PM +0200, Jari Aalto wrote:
>* Mon 2008-02-18 Christopher Faylor <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
>* Message-Id: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Please don't include something that looks like a mail address in
the text of your responses.

>> So, to reiterate: cygwin-apps is not a bug-reporting mailing list and,
>> if you are a package maintainer, you should be monitoring the cygwin
>> mailing list.
>
>Getting the problem known into the developers hands is not very
>effective that way. Considering that the messages's Subject may not
>necessarily name a particular package.
>
>The user list gets about 45 messages per day. Take month and it's
>about 1000 messages. Consider long leaves, absence and life in general
>and the "should monitor" is of questionable value.

That does not differ from any other free software project?.  If there
was a cygwin-bugs or a cygwin bugzilla then all of the problems with
your package would languish when you are on vacation.  That's expected
in a free software project since no one is paying for support.

What isn't expected is that bugs and questions would go unanswered
because the package maintainer thinks their responsibility is to make
.tar.bz2 files available and wait for someone to cc them with problems.
It's possible that there could be a project like that where there is a
list of package maintainers available and people send them problems
directly but that wouldn't make much sense given the above scenario of
the person going on vacation since that person would be a single point
of failure when it's very possible that other people could also answer
questions.

And, *why* do you think that traffic to cygwin-apps is so low?  It's
because it's a closed list and because I routinely tell people not
to send bug reports here.  If everyone sent bug reports (or what they
consider to be bug reports) here then, well, duh, this would be a high
traffic mailing list.

>We could consider better and more organized method of reporting
>issues. Debian uses mail based interface that is based on packages.
>The same could be accomplihed using a web interface and a little of
>PHP coding.


I'm still not quite sure that you're getting the point here and that
is sort of frightening for someone who has provided as many packages
as you.

I'm not talking about what would be nice or what could be done.  I'm
talking about what a package maintainer is expected to be doing now.

It's fairly obvious that not everyone who makes package available reads
the cygwin list.  That is a problem.  If you don't want to read the
mailing list because the traffic is too high then you shouldn't be a
package maintainer.  This isn't an optional part of maintainership.

(as an observation: compared to something like the linux-kernel mailing
list or the gcc-patches mailing list, cygwin mailing list traffic is not
that high.)

I went to the effort of setting up bugzilla for cygwin quite a while
ago.  I volunteered to have it set it up but I didn't want to be
bothered with maintaining it on a daily basis, weeding out all of the
clueless "bug reports", and responding to people with problems.

We can see where that went.   But if anyone wants to resurrect this and
actively support it, then send email here.  And, check out what's available
at sourceware.org's bugzilla.

(can't provide a URL right now because I'm browser-challenged at the
moment)

But the bottom line is that even if we could train most people to send
problems to cygwin-apps.

And, even if we have bugzilla.

And, even if we had a cygwin-bugs mailing list.

There will still be people with problems in the cygwin list.  What are
they supposed to do when they have a question?  File a bug?  Wait for
Eric Blake to notice and cc the email here?

No, it boils down to the fact that package maintainers should consider
end-user support as part of the responsibility for maintaining packages.
Adding a new mailing list and bugzilla is actually just going to provide
you with two other places to check in addition to the cygwin list.

>A dedicated bugs list could be welcoming idea. The message could be
>CC'd to the package maintainer as well if he so wishes. Not all may
>want that but some may want to get mail into their mailbox directly.

A mailing list goes to your mailbox directly.  You can't rely on
people remembering to cc you.

So, again, preparing a package for distribution is only half of the
equation.  The other half is that you are expected to support the
packages you provide.

cgf