Re: Bug statistics

[Tassilo Horn]

On Friday 25 June 2010 12:24:32 Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > With web-based bugtrackers, after entering the bug summary the whole
> > database is searched for similar reports and that list is presended
> > to the user.  Then she can decide if it's really a new, unknown bug.
> > If not, she can simply append additional information to an existing
> > bug.
> 
> This is also far from ideal.  Unless you have a lot of time on your
> hands, going through the bugs and trying to figure out if they are the
> same as yours is a nuisance.

At least my experience with the bugtrackes of the Gentoo GNU/Linux and
KDE projects are quite good.  After entering a bug summary, I get a
short list of possibly related bugs.  Quite often, the bug I wanted to
report is already known and in that list.

And it's no burden to the user.  If I didn't have time, I could skip
checking the suggested relevant bugs and file my bug as new bug, thus
putting the burden on the developers.

I don't say that users should be forced to search the bug database
before writing a report, but there should be an easy way to let willing
users do so.  Currently, the emacs bug reporting interface doesn't even
mention that there is something like that!

IMO, there are many users who care about writing good reports and don't
want to produce duplicates.  When there are more than one bug in
"relevant bugs list" dealing with the same issue, then I often spend
some minutes to link them with each other.  This volunteering in
managing bug reports should be encouraged and made easy for all users.
Especially this "making easy" is not the strong point of debbugs. :-(

Bye,
Tassilo