Low bug triage activity all around

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Omer Akram (om26er at ubuntu.com) wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I have been involved in bug triage for a while in Ubuntu and it seems this
> scene is not that active it used to be although alot of great folks from
> our community are highly devoted.
> 
> I am not sure about the reason behind that but one thing I am sure is that
> previously we had running efforts like "Bug Days" where a certain package
> was selected and all of the Ubuntu Bug Squad was invited to participate in
> triaging those bugs.
> 
> Another reason which could be related is that now there is no one in the
> Ubuntu desktop team (or Canonical) to lead the effort of Bug management and
> community involvement previously Pedro played a big role there.
> 
> So I think we need to think of some ways to improve the situation and get
> more people involved into this effort. Does anyone have
> suggestions/comments about this matter.

Most of the irc seems to have been pretty dead over xmas, I'm guessing
there aren't many of us doing it just for the heck of it at the moment.
There is also the danger that perhaps some of the others got a life
and we aren't getting new ones in.

I've been trying to fix things like universe packages that seg at startup;
but with Debian in freeze it's nigh on impossible to get any fix into debian
unless it also breaks Debian which for a lot of our Fortify triggered
bugs they don't; and for a non-debian dev it's also hard going.

There are also a heck of a lot of unreviewed patches in the system; so perhaps
it's time for another round of patch triaging.

I don't know what the numbers are, but I think the lack of an 'alpha'
for Raring (as opposed to the dailies) makes me think there are less people
trying it; there certainly doesn't seem to be much activity on +1.

I'm also seeing signs there are a few of the regulars who've tried
Raring on their machine and find it's failed very early on in the kernel
and haven't been able to find a working solution to carry on, and have
just gone and ignored it for the moment.

One thing I am starting to do is pick a random point in the bug list
rather than starting at either end; just adding a 1000 or another
random number to the bug list and instead of next/last just add a few
more - lots of people look at the latest bugs; but there are a few
year old untriaged bugs that are still broken on Raring; it just
takes someone to spot them and try them - if the description
in the bug is a seg-at-startup then I tend to try it myself
rather than asking the user to reverify, since the user has probably
moved on.

Dave
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