[rfc] bug handling priorities

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:49:27PM +0200 I heard the voice of
Martin Pool, and lo! it spake thus:
>
> But this is inefficient if it's only going to distinguish between a
> bug you won't fix yet because it's minor, [...]

For a contrary view, asking when you get around to fixing the "minor
bug" is a world of frustration too.  If I file a "minor" bug, getting
no movement on it is really annoying.  To be asked for more details
about it 2 years later is *REALLY* annoying.

It's really not any better for the user to see their bug triaged as
"Yep, that's a real (if minor) bug" when they report it against the
new 0.15 release, and see it still sitting there untouched now that
1.15 is out, than to just have it not touched at all.  As long as it's
New, you can hope somebody will look at it some day.


Frankly, I think that we have "too many" untriaged bugs is a WAY
smaller problem than that we have too many "minor" bugs unfixed one
and two and three years later.  Where's update -r?  Where's the
ability to SEE what rev the WT is on?  Why does diff of binary files
still look so freakin' stupid?  Why doesn't checkout have a --format
yet?  It's only been 5 or 6 months, but why the heck are progress bars
still leaving turds on my screen?  Maybe these aren't major,
earth-shaking, prevent-you-from-getting-work-done bugs, but they're
annoying and often REALLY ugly.

I mean, it's not that we don't have major problems that need worked on
too, but minor things sitting around eternally isn't friendly.  And
minor (and more major, even) things getting partway done and petering
off without landing in favor of the major things isn't the best
either.

Maybe core dev's time is best spent on the big major re-architectings
only they're in a position to do, but when you look at all these
little things that one of them could knock out in 10 minutes...  but
then, if it would take them 2 or 3 hours of time spread over a week to
get it pushed through reviewing and landing, maybe it makes sense that
they're left lie.


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.