Bug Tracker

What is the reason to have two Bug Trackers now?

Peter

We use this bug tracker:
http://www.boot-land...hp?showforum=96

The older bugtracker was an extension of the forum and posts that were made there were not visible on the main page.

The link to the old bugtracker extension was removed from frontpage and it will be kept operational simply for historical reasons.

Hope this helps to clarify.

We use this bug tracker:
http://www.boot-land...hp?showforum=96

And was not removed from classic (not real classic) skin:
http://www.boot-land...ocom=bugtracker
Since, as you might have completely failed to notice, quite a few members do use the classic skin, this can create the misunderstanding.

The older bugtracker was an extension of the forum and posts that were made there were not visible on the main page.

Mainly because there is NOT one reason in the world why bugtracker posts should show on the main page....



Wonko

You're right. Hadn't noticed this detail, my apologies.

Mainly because there is NOT one reason in the world why bugtracker posts should show on the main page

Sure there is.

Community participation. If the active bugs are reported they'll be listed on the frontpage where everyone will see them. This is good to bring additional visibility to what is being done and also remind people of what they would like to see fixed.

On the former bugtracker, very few people would visit to check what was being talked.

This is almost like our external wiki that we had one day, people simply prefer the forum to communicate so we're just making things simpler and more accessible.

Sure there is.

No, there is not.

A bug tracker is intended (guess what) to track bugs.

Otherwise it would be called "gathering place", "trivia for all", "prize contest", "chat room", or anything else that actually could help the "Community participation".

The actual effect a new user has reading this (just as an example - actually a very good example of what a bugtracker post reporting a bug should be by nikzzzz)
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10505
cannot be but

these guys are crazy they talk of things I don't understand and they fixed something, which I cannot fathom what it is about.

Level of interest for the newcomer - non-developer=0 (zero)
The bugtrack misses ID, Title, Appliable version, has Status 1 (one) out of 4, thus it is about an UNtracked bug (thankfully fixed, though in a unknown version/release/SP).
Level of interest for a developer slightly, very slightly more than 0 (zero) as without references it will soon be unfindable.

Now compare with the built-in one (another random example):
http://www.boot-land...amp;showbug=253

We have an ID, a Title, a Status, we miss the actual "stable" version it refers to -and this is not so trivial- but 3 out of 4, better than 1 out of 4.



Wonko

No, there is not.

A bug tracker is intended (guess what) to track bugs.

Otherwise it would be called "gathering place", "trivia for all", "prize contest", "chat room", or anything else that actually could help the "Community participation".

The actual effect a new user has reading this (just as an example - actually a very good example of what a bugtracker post reporting a bug should be by nikzzzz)
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10505
cannot be but

Level of interest for the newcomer - non-developer=0 (zero)
The bugtrack misses ID, Title, Appliable version, has Status 1 (one) out of 4, thus it is about an UNtracked bug (thankfully fixed, though in a unknown version/release/SP).
Level of interest for a developer slightly, very slightly more than 0 (zero) as without references it will soon be unfindable.

Now compare with the built-in one (another random example):
http://www.boot-land...amp;showbug=253

We have an ID, a Title, a Status, we miss the actual "stable" version it refers to -and this is not so trivial- but 3 out of 4, better than 1 out of 4.



Wonko

I tend to agree with Wonko, I bug tracker isn't made for discussion it is made to be a simple list of things wrong that need fixing. the forum itself lacks important features for making a bug tracker effective, such as the bug ID, priority, and status (solved/open).

If somebody looks into my first post:

I asked whether there are TWO bugtrackers. I did not want to start a discussion about ....

And if the answer, like Nuno said "The current one is ..." is valid:

Why, when i click BugTracker in the title menu bar, I come into the invalid one.

As long as that is not cleaned up, I fully ignore BOTH bugtrackers.

Peter

I'd rather have an inefficient bug tracker that is actually used by people than an efficient bug tracker that just tracks dust.

Chat, discussing or just participating are important parts of the motivational factor for everyone involved.

There's nothing worse than coding without feedback to kill a project.

We use this bug tracker:

Who's the "we"? At least Lancelot and I have been using the supposedly "unused" bugtracker. I think all the topics that have been flagged for a future version, other suggestions, etc. need to be moved to the new bugtracker. That is, anything which hasn't been fixed or what have you needs to be merged to new bugtracker. Otherwise remaining issues there will be forgotten.

Or another idea, why not point the "new" bugtracker to the "old" bugtracker since there are so few topics on the new one? Then move the topics from the "new" bugtracker to the "old" bugtracker. This would only be a total of 14 topics to move.

Regards,
Galapo.

When your tires are flat, you do not change the working oil.
"making muddy water"

Or another idea, why not point the "new" bugtracker to the "old" bugtracker since there are so few topics on the new one? Then move the topics from the "new" bugtracker to the "old" bugtracker. This would only be a total of 14 topics to move.

I wish that there was an easy way of porting them over to the forum, my apologies.

The old bugtracker was left operational to keep a list of the bugs that had been reported.


-------

Who's the "we"? At least Lancelot and I have been using the supposedly "unused" bugtracker. I think all the topics that have been flagged for a future version, other suggestions, etc. need to be moved to the new bugtracker. That is, anything which hasn't been fixed or what have you needs to be merged to new bugtracker. Otherwise remaining issues there will be forgotten.

What I'm worried about is having a bug tracker separated from the community which did not worked as intended.

Only a few (good) users know how to use this tool and the vast majority either doesn't report anything or talk directly on the forum because it's the most intuitive action.

We need feedback and we need to make it available for everyone, it can't continue to be done on monolithic posts with hundreds of pages and neither it can continue visible to only some users that visit the external bug tracker.


----------------------------------------



All of us use the forum on daily basis, it's perfectly visible for users when they use the download center.

We get thousands of visitors at our site per day and the active bugs/requests will surely get a higher number of replies whenever they are featured on the frontpage of the site.

For example, if Peter had placed this question on the old tracker, would so many of us be talking about it right now?

Sorry for disagreeing, but I don't believe that bugs shouldn't be discussed and we know that the old bug tracker is not the active place where bugs get reported.


We need feedback and opinions so that we can set priorities and talk about them as much as possible. It's much different to see a request from Lancelot being ignored than a request made from Lancelot with the support of many other folks also expressing their desire to see it implemented, don't you agree?

--------------------------------------------


We could go on with the old bug tracker that is nice/formal and pretend that it works even when noticing that on our stable versions we had only had 6 reported bugs in February, 3 bugs in January, one bug in last November, 2 bugs in last October and so on - can anyone believe that we only had so few bugs reported from users since October 2009?

This is reality. People use the forums. The only thing that I'm suggesting is that we use the a forum section called bugtracker where we put discussions, bugs and requests that already take place around here in either case.

If it's confusing for Peter or anyone else thinking that we have two bug trackers, he should have noted that we actually have four bug trackers for winbuilder.exe: one outside the forum, one inside the forum and another one on DEFCON and yet the development section.

This effort won't work without your help.

I'm only trying to say something like "let's use one bugtracker, shall we?"

Because you know that it's not difficult.

All it takes is changing the topic title as it's already done in most of the cases and we get the necessary functionality although it takes some discipline from the moderator / developer of course.

The forum sections are not an optimal solution (believe me that I know that) but it's a necessary step to keep winbuilder.exe closer to people as realistic as possible.

You've asked for improving the way how we work in the future, I suggest we all agree to use one bug tracker inside the forums as it is the most used tool on our daily activities.

Thank you for reading.

I'm only trying to say something like "let's use one bugtracker, shall we?"

Yes, that's what I would want too, just I never realised that two bugtrackers were being used and that I've been using the "old" one.

My point was mainly that there are a lot of suggestions made for future versions and other remaining issues on the old bugtracker and we shouldn't forget about them.

What I liked about the old bugracker was that priority could be assigned and status could be changed. This gives at a ready glance which topics have been addressed and what the outcome was. On the new bugtracker, this will be difficult to keep a track of the more topics that get created. I guess subject lines can be altered to overcome this.

Regards,
Galapo.

Nuno!

I think we have very different opinions about "What is a Bug Tracker"

For me and most other developers it is a tool to follow the track of a bug.
When a bug is reported, there are no discussions, maybe necessary questions for more information.

Then the bug is classified, e.g. confirmet, bogus, future.

And anywhen the entry is marked as Fixed / Done.

In the forum there can be an discussion topic belonging to the entry in the bug tracker.

But the Bug Tracker must always be clean and managable. That is not providable when the bug tracker is inside a forum.

Peter

Can we have something in the middle?

I mean use the "right" old bugtracker, BUT have it created and linked to a topic in the "normal" Forum?

This way, anyone actually taking care of the reported bug will have the opportunity to take care of it using the "essential" features of the "real" bugtracker AND members trying to check if a bug has already been reported (and hopefully fixed) can access this "ordered information, while in the meantime BOTH "kind" of people have an occasion to discuss the issue.

The current plot:

• someone reports a problem in the normal forum
• some of the developers post OK, post it in the bug tracker
• noone, EVER, posts back a link to the bugtracker entry
• anyone by simply checking the bugtracker can see if a problem has already been reported and it's current status (though thanks to the poor naming convention noone is able to understand in which §@ç#ing version the bug has been solved or in which one it will be however taken care of)

The proposed plot:

• someone reports a problem in the normal forum
• some of the developers create a bug-tracker entry AND links the OP to it AND moves the OP report to the "Forum Fake bugtracker" AND adds to it a link to the bugtracker entry
• anyone by simply checking the bugtracker can see if a problem has already been reported and it's current status
• anyone only trying to participating will have an occasion to discuss the bug in the "Forum Fake bugtracker" AND have an occasion to access the above to see if the bug has been solved and in which version

Wonko

I think we have very different opinions about "What is a Bug Tracker"

And I share the same perspective as a developer.

But I cannot afford to focus just on this perspective and need to also consider the perspectives from a user side and from an administrator side, the reasons that move this change were explained on my previous post.

But the Bug Tracker must always be clean and managable. That is not providable when the bug tracker is inside a forum.

People already post bugs in the forum and not on the external bugtracker, we're not stopping something that already happens since the beginning of wb, we're recognizing that this exists and providing a nice clean section to categorize them.

What I'm worried about is having a bug tracker separated from the community which did not worked as intended.

It is working as intented. (no body wrote it is not working)

Only a few (good) users know how to use this tool and the vast majority either doesn't report anything or talk directly on the forum because it's the most intuitive action.

Right, but you forget mostly majority report bugs on Project's page.

For example, if Peter had placed this question on the old tracker, would so many of us be talking about it right now?

Bug tracker is not a place to ask questions !

Sorry for disagreeing, but I don't believe that bugs shouldn't be discussed and we know that the old bug tracker is not the active place where bugs get reported.

Right, but you forget forum is the active place bugs reported. Bug tracker is the place to remember by development.

We need feedback and opinions so that we can set priorities and talk about them as much as possible. It's much different to see a request from Lancelot being ignored than a request made from Lancelot with the support of many other folks also expressing their desire to see it implemented, don't you agree?

The ignorence part is about psc reaction (he reacted ignored). I also have other posts Nuno ignored. Ignorence is not about topic-bugtracker-etc. It is a "reply" to something by someone.

Like me asking you "Further, If you request, I can also write important bug fixes to bug tracker by flagging them as fixed ?" thinking it might be a solution for your concerns, but got no reply (ignored)

2 bugs in last October and so on - can anyone believe that we only had so few bugs reported from users since October 2009?

this is mostly because bugs are fixed in topics (either project topics, or where a topic created to report bug)
recent example:
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10349

If it's confusing for Peter or anyone else thinking that we have two bug trackers, he should have noted that we actually have four bug trackers for winbuilder.exe: one outside the forum, one inside the forum and another one on DEFCON and yet the development section.

we have 2 bug trackers (with your defination).
Outside the forum(we do not and can not have it). It is by defination outside
one inside the forum=>bugtracker and development topic (only 2)
Defcon topic=NO, it is not bugtracker, it WAS created to make next release of winbuilder stable. Since released no more interest to this topic. Besides I already closed it. (and as I always wrote, topic was a success, but making silent decision to release result with a looot disturbance as usual)
+
Natural bug reports= bugs reported during script development, during project failures, during a discussion topic which frequently has no intention to point wb bug etc. They are also catched and fixed mostly, but has no (or small) trace on winbuilder development history.



Nuno, what you do not understand is (I guess) current (I mean what we've used so far model of bug tracking) settled with a lot of real life experiences.
If you've asked for what is needed for improvments to old model instead of making changes silently without asking anyone, here they are:

Additions to the model we've used:
*
"Bug Tracker Section" can be used instead of development section
This is I guess what you want which is also better to me and has no significant effect on the previous model.
*
psc can write additional information to history notes if there is no information on "Bug Tracker"
example:

added - AddInterface can optionally define an alternate interface -- http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10349

or may create a quick bug topic writing small info with prodivind link getting a bug id ticket, than

fixed - Bug ID #blabla: added - AddInterface can optionally define an alternate interface

both are easy and take only 1 minute.


only adding these 2 would solve your concerns which are easy to implement and I am pretty sure would be appreciated by others.

With other words, just change 2 tyres.

Anyway, since decisions again already taken silently and since my ideas mostly ignored and my posts not read carelfully, I decide to wait for a while to see the water unmuddy (clean).

But I cannot afford to focus just on this perspective and need to also consider the perspectives from a user side and from an administrator side, the reasons that move this change were explained on my previous post.

Well, in other words, you, because of your "administrator" or "user" view, decided to effectively make the work of the developer harder.

Interesting approach.

Just for your interest, the actual duty of an administator is to find ways to have things go smooth, in order NOT to create problems to the people that are actually working (the developers).

And, with all due respect , §@ç# the users, boot-land is NOT a Commercial or Political entity you don't need consensus, you don't need to sell anything to anyone, but even if this was the case, you should §@ç#ing make an opinion poll or a market research, before assuming that your view with the "user hat on" is actually the view of the actual users, and I mean the "qualified" ones, the ones that care about boot-land, that actually contribute to it, that try, within their capabilities and knowledge, to give a hand, leechers and lamers have no relevance in a Community.

The whole thingy is now officially declared a S.E.P., Wonko the Sane spoke, whoever wanted to listen should have done so, you are doing a foolish thing, you have been told about it, you are perfectly free to go on with whatever you wish to do.




Wonko

As developer I simply refuse to work with this new forum called "Bug Tracker".

It is simply a new forum not containing any help for Bug Tracking.

Now with only some entries it is managable.

But when the list contains several tens or hundreds ???

• Should I read daily all these items to remember whether they are actual, or bogus, or scheduled for future, or fixed?
• Should I generate an Excel table on my desktop to maintain WinBulder bugs / requests?
• Should I simply say "Not me"? That's what I'm doing now.

Peter

@psc
There may be an easier way out :
stop writing bugs in the program







Wonko

I have not enough experience.

Please teach me the HOW.

Or do you mean "Stop coding"?

That for 100% will not introduce any bug.

Peter

Or do you mean "Stop coding"?

That for 100% will not introduce any bug.

Yep , that's an alternative solution, too.

Can we post here:
http://www.boot-land...ocom=bugtracker

about the bug that is affecting Nuno's "what is good for boot-land" sub-routine?

I presume that some of the PSEUDO-code in it (as I can see it in my crystal ball):

Const MyView as String = "AlwaysRight"

IF MyView="AlwaysRight" THEN CALL :Do_something

CALL :Look_For_Appreciation

CALL :Ignore_Results

CALL :Explain_Reasons_For_Action

CALL :Ignore_Comments

Could be simplified/bettered to either:

CALL :Do_something

or:

Dim MyIdea as String

CALL :AskMembers for their opinions

IF MyIdea="People_liked_it" THEN CALL :Do_something

CALL :Look_For_Appreciation

BOTH latter snippets have their merits, and are sintactically correct, whilst the original one, whilst being sintactically correct, lacks some logics/has unneded overlays/loops.



Wonko

* Should I read daily all these items to remember whether they are actual, or bogus, or scheduled for future, or fixed?

What's the effort spent for changing the topic title? You even have more flexibility to define tags you consider appropriate to describe the issue.

* Should I generate an Excel table on my desktop to maintain WinBulder bugs / requests?

Establish a working rule that if a topic is open, it still requires active attention from the developer in the future.

Personally, I use a simple notepad file to keep in mind the priorities that need to be solved while developing. Nowadays, I even write to paper so that I can add extra notes and consider the things that I read from here and there.

* Should I simply say "Not me"? That's what I'm doing now.

We can go on and pretend that the external tracker is used for actually doing some work and improve winbuilder.exe


Let's bring back simplicity to winbuilder.exe and just follow what was sketched:

Reporting on the bug tracker forum section is critical:
http://www.boot-land...hp?showforum=96

It is ok to have one huge discussion topic while testing alpha wb's but each bug found on stable and beta versions should have it's own topic inside the bugtracker and be strictly discussed there. We need people to use this method to keep focus and track of which bugs will be prioritized for the next versions. Having a bug reported over there will allow transparency to see which bugs were already addressed to everyone.

http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10500

Thank you.

We can go on and pretend that the external tracker is used for actually doing some work and improve winbuilder.exe

Personally, I don't think there's any pretending needed. The "new" bugtracker has a total of 16 topics currently. The "old" bugtracker which you said was "not working as intended" has a total of 241 topics related to winbuilder.exe. Going by the topic dates, I think September was when the new bugtracker was added. When comparing with the old bugtracker, there is far, far many more topics there added after this date than on the new bugtracker. All this even with the link removed from the Web 2.0 skin! I fail to see how it was not serving its purpose since these numbers speak for themselves.

Regards,
Galapo.

these numbers speak for themselves.

Yes, both numbers express a very poor indication of usage and that is my worry.

Most bugs and requests get placed inside defcon on big topics or inside development, the goal here is to merely organize what already happens for a long time.

At the moment, it's a big confusion to navigate around bugs and requests. I mean, how do you expect that a normal user becomes aware of active development?


---------------------------------------------


This discussion reminds me of all the obstacles that were given in 2007 against using app scripts. We all knew that they were needed but yet changing the script paradigm to add abstraction from projects was so turbulent.

Can we use some of this energy for discussing the new features and wishlist requests for wb 081?

Yes, both numbers are a poor indication of usage.

Sorry, you missed my point entirely. Numbers here are indeed an indication of usage. You previously stated that the old bugtracker was "not working as intended" and has been replaced by the new bugtracker. However, when we look at the usage, the old bugtracker was used far, far more often than the new bugtracker for reporting bugs and requests. Hence it would be fair to say that the old bugtracker was working more in line with intention than the new bugtracker -- and yet you scrap the old bugtracker in preference for the new bugtracker because the old bugtracker was "not working as intended"! What happens on DEFCON is beside the point. The point is that we have an old bugtracker that was being used more often than the new bugtracker.

I think we should still use the old bugtracker. Usage shows that it was preferred. And in being able to handle bugs, it is indeed preferrable as Peter and Wonko have stated.

But of course you are free to do as you wish! This is just my opinion.

Regards,
Galapo.