Re: Bugzilla spring cleaning

[Pedro Alves <palves at redhat dot com>]

On 02/28/2014 05:15 PM, Doug Evans wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 3:17 AM, Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 02/27/2014 06:11 PM, Doug Evans wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>>
>>> There's a few cleanups I've wanted to see happen on our Bugzilla site.
>>>
>>> The ones that are currently on my mind are these:
>>>
>>> 1) Remove old entries from the "Versions" list.
>>>
>>> Do we really need 3.x and 4.x here?
>>> Personally, I can see deleting 5.x too, and replacing all of them with
>>> a "catch-all" field for old releases.
>>> [I can also see deleting 6.x, but "baby steps" ...]
>>
>> What's the actual problem this is trying to solve?
> 
> Improve the S/N ratio for users entering bugs.

OK, that's more focused.  You just said the "Versions" list,
and that to me implied bug search as well, not just the new
bug form.

>>> I can imagine their appearance in some old bug making it
>>> hard/impossible to accomplish this, but I won't know unless I ask.
>>
>> If there are bugs filed against those versions, then I don't
>> see the point in removing them.
> 
> Neither do I! [What words did I used to convey such a significant
> probability that that is what I wanted?  Let me know so I won't use
> them again.  :-)]

- "spring cleaning" in the subject makes me go into "delete cruft"
  mode.

- You hinted at "deleting 6.x" too.  As surely you'll know there are
bugs filed against those versions, I was led me to believe
you wanted to just delete the bugs along with the versions, if
possible.  But I see now that you meant instead to merge those
into the "catch-all" for old versions.

> That is why I raised the possibility that what I want to achieve is
> not achievable (*1).
> OTOH, *if* we can remove entries from the Versions list, *and* it
> doesn't affect existing bugs, then I'd like to do so.

OK.

>>> 1b) IWBN to reverse-sort the Versions list.
>>
>> I agree this is one would indeed be very nice.  It's quite
>> likely we have bugs erroneously reported against old versions
>> simply because of this issue.  Bugs converted from the old
>> gnats (which I believe is the majority of filed bugs) fortunately
>> have the "Release" field in the description text, so we
>> could fix any in that situation.  Furthermore, it seems to me
>> that doing this pretty much would make the issue of eliminating
>> old versions practically moot?
> 
> The older versions in the list are still clutter and noise.

Alright, now we're focusing only on the version list in the
new bug form.  Here I agree there's no need to allow reporting
bugs against older versions.

> Plus even with a reverse-sorted list it's still possible for users to
> accidentally file a bug for the wrong version.  Do we actually intend
> to put any time into such old versions?  I don't.  

Nor do I.

> So let's turn it
> around, what's the justification (setting aside caveat (*1) above),
> for keeping them?

Well, if you were talking about bug search, knowing which gdb
version a bug was filed against.  So I see no real good upside
to merging old versions into a single catch-all for old releases,
at some arbitrary moving cut off date -- I'd rather preserve history.

For the new bug form, none that I'd insist on myself
(discounting possible Bugzilla technical limitations).

So the real question should be IMO:

 Should we allow users to report new bugs against old versions of
 GDB the community no longer supports?

And here we agree.  In my opinion, no, we shouldn't.

Thanks,
-- 
Pedro Alves