The 'easy' tag

[Russel Winder]

On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 17:01 +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
[ . . . ]
> Yes, it is.  What I'm getting at here is that fixing
> easy-but-uinmportant bugs may not be a good use of time, and we might
> be better off fixing fewer but more serious or important bugs.  On the
> other hand 'quantity has a quality all its own' and fixing a bunch of
> little annoyances might be satisfying to both users and developers,
> and maybe also a good chance for new people to send some bug fixes.
> At any rate I think it'd be worth spending a day or two.
> 
> This is arguably just a redefinition of 'importance', but I don't have
> much appetite for that theoretical argument. :-)

[ . . . ]

Ignoring the general argument, in favour of the post EuroPython 2009
sprint specific one:

Three people who were not core Bazaar developers turned up, two really
enthusiastic, one wondering what he could contribute, in addition to a
trio of Bazaar regulars.  These three casual contributors were looking
for "low hanging fruit" so hitting the "easy" was clearly what was
appropriate.  However a couple of the things marked "easy" turned out to
be someone different to easy once investigation began.

I think my point here is that ignoring bugs that are not important is
exactly the right thing for the main developers, but picking up less
important but easy and quick is ideal for the casual Bazaar contributor.

I think we are all agreeing here in different ways.  My summary is that
it is not appropriate for core developers to ignore bugs just because
they are easy or unimportant, but where a bug is being ignored by the
core team because it is not on the critical path, it is good if it can
be presented to the casual contributors in a way that makes it easy for
them to send in contributions for the core team to assess and either
accept or reject as appropriate.

Having the easy tag is a start, having an easier way of setting up
Bazaar to submit contributions would be another good step, but that is a
topic of another thread.
-- 
Russel.
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Dr Russel Winder      Partner
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