An interesting read when discussing what to do about our bugs...

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 07:47:00PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> >On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 07:34:57PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> >>nodata wrote:
> >>
> >>Sometimes (rarely) I do forward a bugreport upstream (using upstream's 
> >>preferred bug tracking mechanism) and then kindly explain that I'm not 
> >>intimate enough with the code to fix the issue at hand with a reasonable 
> >>effort, point them to the upstream bug and add them to the CC there if 
> >>possible. And then close with a resolution of upstream. Not very pretty, 
> >>but honest and way better then letting bugs linger for months.
> >
> >It is possible to link tickets between the Red Hat bugzilla and other
> >BZ instances. At the bottom there is a 'External Bugzilla References'
> >form - simply add the number of the associated upstream BZ ticket. 
> >Rather than entering upstream and then closing the RH BZ ticket, I'd
> >suggest using this linkage between BZ instances. Then when the upstream
> >maintainer finds a fix, you still have a record of the fact that it
> >needs to be pulled into Fedora. If you close the Fedora BZ, you'll
> >never remember to pull in the fix from upstream.
> >
> 
> I know about the BZ link feature and I always use it when a bug is reported 
> both upstream and in Fedora, but I've never ever seen any good come out of 
> it, I would expect Fedora BZ to send out mails to those CC-ed on the Fedora 
> bug when something happens in the upstream linked bug, maybe even add a 
> comment when the upstream bug changes, but it does none of the above, so I 
> wonder what is the added value of using the BZ link feature instead of just 
> putting an url to upstream's ticket in a comment?

With some upstream BZ instances, we do actually get state updates from the
upstream BZ fed back into the RH BZ, but I agree in 95% of scenarios it
does very little. Which is a shame. At least by using the link feature
we have the potential to write tools to do automatic analysis/reports/etc.
But if you just add a URL, we have lost this formal linkage forever and
don't even get the possibilty of writing tools to process it.

Dan.
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