dormant bugs and our perception

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Jan 2, 2008 3:14 PM, John Poelstra <poelstra at redhat.com> wrote:
> Jon Stanley said the following on 01/02/2008 01:54 PM Pacific Time:
> > If it would help I was thinking of trying to make my way to FUDcon
> > Raleigh to further this cause - I think it may be premature, though.
> > I live in NYC, so airfare is cheap still.
> >
>
> Yes!  Please come to FUDCon.  I am planning on being there and have been
> ruminating for a while on how to make this area work better.  I am also
> working on a proposal[1] for a bugzilla process flow and policy to cover
> how the Fedora project triages and resolves open bugs for:
>    1) unsupported releases--Fedora(Core) <= 6
>    2) supported releases--Fedora 7 & 8
>    3) releases under development--rawhide/Fedora 9
>
> Unlike others that have posted here, I am less optimistic that we can
> viably review and address all 13,000+ open bugs.  We need to do
> something drastic to clear the deck and start a process that insures
> that we don't end up in this hole again.  I think this huge backlog is
> one of the biggest psychological de-motivators we have!
>

Well from seeing multiple clearing of the decks.. they don't really
help long enough because they will rapidly show up again.  QA is a big
job with needing 2x as many QA people as developers. The problem is
that its not sexy as being a developer and doesn't get the perks. It
is also a full time job because you have to do 3 things

1) Get in the head of the bug-reporter. What were they doing? How did
the bug occur? How do I get that person to send me more info to get
this cleared up.
2) Get in the head of the developer. Why did they code it this way?
How do I get that developer to fix the code..
3) Be able to do this cleanly, precisely and repeatably.

You want QA people, you need to get a community with definate rewards
for triaging and helping to fix code, you need someone charismatic
(I'm out .. I am as charismatic as 9 day old pea soup... actually I
think the mold on top would get more people to work than me) to help
kick start it, and you need full time people not a person. And you
need to be able to train people how to triage and fix bugs... because
most of us who have done or do QA have really only learned from the
school of hardknocks and only when we were paid to listen to
angry/tired/cranky users, and angry/tired/divorced-from-reality
developers.

QA work is probably the most important work involved in keeping a
distro together long term. It is also some of the hardest work and the
least rewarded because well who sees it?

I wish I could get to FUDcon but its way out of the way so beyond some
sort of VOIP.. I can only come via IRC/email.


> In other words, we need to create a solid plan with input from lots of
> people and then execute it.  FUDCon would be a great place to get
> started.... not sure if this is a hackfest or barcamp topic.
>
> John
>
> [1] I'll post to the wiki and announce once I have something of
> substance.  Most likely not until next week.
>
>
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-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"