don't use bug tasks for transitions

[Jordan Mantha]

BTW, shouldn't this discussion be on ubuntu-devel or launchpad-users? It
doesn't seem specific to MOTU.

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, 31 May 2008 02:35:03 +0200 Stefan Potyra <sistpoty at ubuntu.com>
> wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >Am Samstag 31 Mai 2008 02:01:56 schrieb Scott Kitterman:
> >> On Sat, 31 May 2008 01:14:16 +0200 Stefan Potyra <sistpoty at ubuntu.com>
> >>
> >> wrote:
> >> >Hi folks,
> >> >
> >> >as overheard on #ubuntu-devel today, please don't use one bug with many
> >> >different tasks for transitions. The problem with this is, that any
> >> >subscriber of an affected package will get every mail for a change in
> that
> >> >bug (in short: [he/she'll get] "zillion mails" [in which he/she has]
> "no
> >> >interest in"[1]).
> >>
> >> I think this is an unfortunate aspect of the curent LP design.
> >
> >Can you elaborate on this? (as Sebastien already noted on irc, one might
> be
> >interested in comments to fixed bugs as well. So I personally don't see a
> >design, which would fix this... of course I'd be happy to get good ideas
> on
> >this).
> >
> It could be solved one of two ways:
>
> 1. Not send the mails relavent to packages users aren't subscribed to and
> then users can subscribe to the bug if they want more.
>
> 2.  Send bugmail as currently but allow users to unsubscribe from/
> blacklist specific bugs so they get no more bugmail on that bug but remain
> subscribed to the package.
>

There are two relevant Launchpad bugs open:

1) https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/83488 - this is to implicitly unsubscribe
people/teams who have been implicitly subscribed (by being subcribed to the
package) when the relevant task has been changed to Invalid. This would make
it so that mistaken tasks wouldn't been so annoying. It might also be
possible to do the same thing for Fix Released but I think there may be some
debate on that.

2)https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/204980 - I filed this bug to allow
people/teams implicitly subscribed to unsubscribe to a specific bug. This is
Scott's 2. above. However, my impression after talking with Launchpad
developers is that this is rather difficult to do with the current Launchpad
code so it might be quite some time (if ever) for it to get implemented.

I also wrote an email to launchpad-users back in early April on this subject
[0] but didn't get any response from Launchpad people. I believe, as a
generalization, they believe such "metabugs" are an abuse of bug tasks,
though one that they open themselves up to by having such a feature. Indeed,
they are a bit of a corner case and don't happen all that often. It's just
that when they do it's rather annoying to be spamming hundreds of people :-)

Another solution, IMO, would be to file individual bugs against the packages
but then have a "transition tracker" on ubuntuwire.com that would track the
various bugs. It would be fairly easy I think to have a general template
where all you needed to do is tell it the bug numbers and it would set up a
page to track the status. We could also have a submission script to help
with the mass filing for transitions.

I don't like the idea of tracking activities in one tool (LP) with another
tool (pages on qa.ubuntuwire.com) but I think the fact of the matter is that
Launchpad will never fully cater to our needs so we need a rubust toolset to
be able to get what we need. If we can at least standardize on one place for
such extra-Launchpad scripts (like qa.ubuntuwire.com or people.ubuntu.com)
then I think it'd really help.

-Jordan

[0] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2008-April/003550.html
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