Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

That's nice, but developing those processes are a huge time sink that I do not have. The fact that the community is forced to pick up the pieces from each botched Nokia release is annoying.

The fact of the matter is in a year or two this will all be pretty much moot. Nokia will have squandered more than 3 years in the internet tablet field and be playing catch-up to players like google, Apple, and others if they are even still selling the units.

Right now I can download and develop for both the iPhone and Andriod without having to rebuild my system. Both provide emulators, toolcahins, and documentation that are basically complete and functional. Apple and google have both invested in making their tools attractive to developers by putting the time and effort into design and functionality.

Nokia's shotgun approach to improving the platform has produced what? Canola2, yet another closed application which is having staffing issues right now ( If I'm reading handful right ).

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

That's fine, time isn't free, but dismissing what they're doing out-of-hand (stuff that they're doing almost entirely in their own free time) isn't helpful to anybody.

If you actually have constructive, useful things to say then do, but screaming "IT SUX!" doesn't help anybody.

Yes, it's unfortunate that there wasn't more coordination to get the timing right with the Diablo release, but developers had plenty of opportunity to get their stuff into Diablo Extras and through the autobuilder before it was released, they just didn't.

That said, there will be alpha and beta releases of the Fremantle SDK, so this issue is much less meaningful moving forward.

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

Or they could just use something like git or svn and keep it open, have a public development bugtracker, and have free help instead of having to do it all themselves. The fact is, they are developing each release like it is closed-source, then opening it to the public after the official release.

Nokia could choose to include the community on the development process BEFORE a release. I don't understand why they don't. They keep it all internal and THEN include the community. That's just plain inefficient. You don't see Debian doing this, you don't see Ubuntu doing this, and you certainly don't see Android doing this. I could grab a bleeding-edge, bug-filled, crash and set my computer on fire build of Ubuntu 8.10 right this very moment. And while yes, it's unstable, at least I might be able to see what made it crash and burn, submit a bug report, and maybe even submit a patch for the package. What a concept! The community helping develop software before it is released!

By the way, the bugtracker still sucks. Just try the search string "powervr" and see how far you get.

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

Yes, in the past, but we're in a transitional period right now, and this is the plan moving forward.

This is part of the reason why I say you should know a little bit about something before you go spouting off.

This is just inane. :rolleyes:

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

On the other hand, I haven't seen Debian or Ubuntu shipping many devices that run their distributions. Devices whose hardware specifications can be determined by competitors based on the software under development in the open.

As it stands, Maemo development is less open than that of other Linux distributions, but more open than that of the operating software in many other handheld devices. Nokia is a large corporation that has been traveling the standard, closed development path for a long time. They're shifting now, but simple inertia means the change can't be completed overnight. At this point though, the course change appears to have taken on an inertia of its own, and that's encouraging.

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

Thanks for opening this thread. Let's convert it in more useful input. Staying on the topic:

Andre and Karsten, maemo.org bugmasters, were recently looking for feedback at Defining the Maemo Bugzilla scope

The core discussion about getting the developers involved is in the bug 630, as mentioned already. For you it might be natural to have developers involved in a free software project. However, what is in fact natural in projects shipping software preinstalled in consumer electronic devices is not to have a public bug tracker at all. In Maemo we are trying to improve negotiating between two worlds that until now didn't have much contact.

So you want to improve the visibility of the most relevant bugs in maemo.org: your ideas are welcome at https://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_maemo.org

There is also a proposal for http://maemo.org/community/ that is waiting to be pushed.

So you want to improve the community involvement in bugs.maemo.org: https://wiki.maemo.org/Bugsquad

So you want to get rid of the Garage tracker: https://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Garage_b...ng_in_Bugzilla

So you want to go for mid-term planning, including possibilities like using Launchpad: https://wiki.maemo.org/2010_Agenda#B...ng_future_plan

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

@Mutiny32:

> A person should just be able to hit Bugzilla on the Maemo homepage and see a list of bugs.

Yes, that is why we want to port GNOME Bugzilla's Project overview pages to Maemo Bugzilla. Help is always welcome!

> Look at the tracking system that Ubuntu has with Launchpad. Excellent. Flexible. USEABLE.

lol. No, sorry. I've been also working in Ubuntu Lanchpad for a long time and I am never able to find the bugs I actually search for. The query function is one of the worst I've ever seen. And it misses some sorting functions that I need...

> Even Bugzilla itself, in its latest incarnation by Mozilla is easy to use. Why must Maemo's be so convoluted and purpose-defeating?

If you'd come up with clear and explicit examples, we can work on improving them. Keeping it vague like this does not help anybody.


> Part of the problem is that bugzilla isn't the bug tracking system... it's the user venting system which is then distilled and copied over to an INTERNAL bug tracking system that we have no access to.

Valid criticism. I work on getting Nokia to become more open. This is a step by step process, and you cannot have everything in the open. This is not only a software project, from the Nokia point of view the software is also based on some hardware, and hardware means competition. Also see Maemo bug 630.

Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 

I bet you those are in minority. That's the first one I ever saw anyway. I don't think that's very relevant. For those garage projects I've been interested in I've always found the source code.

Why subversion? Well, that's simply because it was the version control system of choice by those who set up garage. It's not a bad choice. It could've been CVS or GIT, but why would it be an issue at all that it's subversion? Then you say 'Why only subversion' (my highlighting). You're not seriously suggesting that there should be _more_ than one version control system repository for the same source code? That's certainly not very usual..