Bugs Reported Against a PPA

[hggdh]

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:55:41 -0800
Jordan Mantha <laserjock at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> > My opinion:
> >
> > Bugs against a PPA should not be invalid bugs. They should be
> > clearly identified as part of bug triage as being against a PPA,
> > and the PPA owner should have a chance to decide what to do with
> > the bug. This could be easily accomplished by adding a PPA tag to
> > the bugs, and/or add [PPA] to the summary.  
> 
> I think rather the bugs should *not* be filed in Ubuntu's bug tracker
> but sent to the PPA owner. 

I disagree. The easiest way to forward a bug to the PPA owner is by
filling it as a bug...

>They can forward the bug on to Ubuntu if
> they determine it to be an Ubuntu bug. What you're suggesting is
> similar to us filing all our bugs in Debian's BTS and just flagging
> them as "ubuntu". I don't think Debian would appreciate that too much
> as I don't think most Ubuntu maintainers would appreciate bugs in our
> bug tracker from 3rd party packages. 

This example, or so it seems to me, is not quite applicable:

1. PPAs allows one to build *Ubuntu* packages (or derivatives);
2. PPAs allows for specific testing of new features or upstream bug
fixes;
3. PPAs can also be abused, of course; nevertheless the point here is
not curbing or controlling such abuse, but allowing for tracking of
issues on packages that satisfy (2) above.

> It makes both triage and bug
> fixing just that much harder if we have to always worry about what
> somebody else has maybe done and track down changes in all the PPAs.

Nobody proposed that, if I understand the thread. What was proposed is
that PPA bugs should be recorded on Malone, and in such a way that they
would be clearly understood as *NOT* official Ubuntu bugs.

> > Perhaps a better procedure that tags would be to create a package
> > for the PPA. As bug reporters will not normally have the knowledge
> > to create that package, it will become the job of the triage team.
> > That involves more work for a team with enough work already.  
> 
> Launchpad doesn't have the ability to handle "ghost" packages.

Indeed, and, for full support of PPAs, this should be addressed.

> The best thing I can think of is to make Launchpad grow functionality
> to file bugs against PPAs. People should be filing bugs in the place
> where they got the software.

I agree, and this is also what I proposed. But this functionality does
not currently exist in Malone -- and this is also why I suggested
involving Malone/LP development in this. But we should not need to
wait...

We can still abuse Malone, until such a day arrives that Malone/LP
development catches up. The other option would be to forbid such abuse 
-- which would mean that workflow "bugs" should also be dropped (since 
they are also not bugs, after all, and we are abusing Malone on this).

Cheers,

..hggdh..
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