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-   -   The bug tracking system sucks...badly (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=21794)

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 12:06
The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
For lack of a better word.

How old is it? What is the point of a bug tracking system where you have to search for problems instead of reading about them? A person should just be able to hit Bugzilla on the Maemo homepage and see a list of bugs. That way, issues that need fixing get visibility. Look at the tracking system that Ubuntu has with Launchpad. Excellent. Flexible. USEABLE. Even Android has a bug tracking that blows Maemo's out of the water and it is less than a year old!

Even Bugzilla itself, in its latest incarnation by Mozilla is easy to use. Why must Maemo's be so convoluted and purpose-defeating? You click on Maemo's Bugzilla link and it brings you to a page where you have to SEARCH for issues? What? How does that accomplish anything? Bugtrackers are there for a reason. Visibility, collaboration, and quicker resolution. Ours is akin to going "Hmm, I wonder if the ssl package in Diablo crashes MicroB whe you visit pages with Javascript? I think I'll search for it. That is bass ackwards.

Oh, and what is it with all the Maemo future development projects in the garage closed to the general populous? Are you guys sharing porn and warez in there or something? Development should be open. Open development invites more innovation, better quality if finished product, and a fuzzy feeling.

One last thing. Don't hide or password-protect your development repositories. That is idiotic. If you don't want the public seeing your unfinished product, then why is there even a repo out there? It's like your cooking steak, it's not done yet, but everyone can smell and anticipate it and may even have some insight as to what seasoning to put on it or what that weird black spot on it is, but the grill is closed and locked.

If you want to help Maemo fulfill its potential, stop putting up roadblocks. If someone says package0.4_beta.deb doesn't work and wants tech support, simply point out that it says beta and tell them to use the non-beta version. Kind of like how car dealerships won't deal with a broken car that was broken because the owner modified something that had something to do with it breaking.

So, a rundown:

Make Bugzilla something useful by letting us see bugs
Stop being so secretive about development software in the garage. Let us torture it before the public gets ahold of it and finds out it sucks. An example being the A-GPS app. Why can't I zoom? Can I close it after I've selected my target area? What exactly is the packet data option's use? The preferred connection box is always greyed out. Does it even have a purpose? Does this thing even actually do something other than make me keep reconsidering exactly where I live and tinkering with it to distract me from how long GPS takes to get a fix in KANSAS!?

One last thing...Apt-get is supposed to solve dependency hell by getting dependencies for files you want to install. Why doesn't the package manager do this for me? A lot of stuff is non-installable because...you guessed it...missing dependencies! Well, then, why don't you go get them for me so I can stop being frustrated that I can't find your specific version of glib or whatever?

Hasn't this been brought up before?

Fix these things. Right now they are a waste of resources.:rolleyes:

Bundyo 2008-07-11 12:09
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
There is a fairly recent thread about the bug tracking system.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 12:11
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bundyo (Post 201681)
There is a fairly recent thread about the bug tracking system.
I like being the squeaky wheel.:cool:

But you agree with my points, don't you.

Bundyo 2008-07-11 12:19
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Yes, i don't like the current Bugzilla, but it gets the work done regardless. :)

And sometimes its not that easy to change something that rooted itself in your current web infrastructure, so I understand them if they don't want to change it.

anidel 2008-07-11 12:36
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
There are better ways to ask for something. Always.
You chose the worst.

BTW, apt-get does get those deps for you. But how can it figure out where to get them from, if you don't tell it ?
Also, did you miss the word "beta" on the AGPS-UI ?
Also, did you even realize that may be there is no need to zoom on that map ?

You said on last thing too many times. Steve says it once.

brontide 2008-07-11 12:39
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
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.

yerga 2008-07-11 12:48
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Oh, and what is it with all the Maemo future development projects in the garage closed to the general populous? Are you guys sharing porn and warez in there or something? Development should be open. Open development invites more innovation, better quality if finished product, and a fuzzy feeling.
I don't understand this. Why are the garage projects closed to the people?

Quote:
One last thing. Don't hide or password-protect your development repositories. That is idiotic. If you don't want the public seeing your unfinished product, then why is there even a repo out there? It's like your cooking steak, it's not done yet, but everyone can smell and anticipate it and may even have some insight as to what seasoning to put on it or what that weird black spot on it is, but the grill is closed and locked.
Well, it perhaps was a simple strategy. If you were capable of get the password, you were the sufficiently smart to be able to test these development packages and send bugs about it. If not better that you were out of this pre-release. It was a game ;)


About the bugzilla, I think Andre and Karsten would be charmed to receive feedback about it. Really, it's necessary more feedback from the community in the right places in some topics.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 13:01
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by anidel (Post 201687)
There are better ways to ask for something. Always.
You chose the worst.

BTW, apt-get does get those deps for you. But how can it figure out where to get them from, if you don't tell it ?
Also, did you miss the word "beta" on the AGPS-UI ?
Also, did you even realize that may be there is no need to zoom on that map ?

You said on last thing too many times. Steve says it once.
I know there are better ways to ask for things. I didn't choose the worst. I chose to be clear and concise. No beating around the bush, no small suggestions, just saying it how I see it. It sucks. And I DID see the beta on AGPS. And no need to zoom? Ok, you pick out Kansas City on a map of the US with a stylus the size of an ink pen.

And I know I said one last thing too many times because I didn't want to flood the forum with threads.

I want what's best for the community. Right now, the bug-tracker is effectively ineffective to someone like me who likes to browse and see what I can help with. I don't spend my days searching for issues that I think might possibly pop up. I want to see the issues staring me in the face.

And one last thing, Usually the repositories the program resides in also contains all necessary dependencies. You shouldn't have to tell it, that's my point.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 13:08
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by yerga (Post 201698)
I don't understand this. Why are the garage projects closed to the people?



Well, it perhaps was a simple strategy. If you were capable of get the password, you were the sufficiently smart to be able to test these development packages and send bugs about it. If not better that you were out of this pre-release. It was a game ;)


About the bugzilla, I think Andre and Karsten would be charmed to receive feedback about it. Really, it's necessary more feedback from the community in the right places in some topics.
I figured out their password and user-agent scheme, but it wasn't needed anyway. Most of packages are downstream from Debian anyway and a lot of them include security fixes. For a company who makes the best firewalls in the world (yes, I'm a security engineer/consultant, I know IPSO and the IP platform intimately like PN0029), you'd think they would have a uniform sense of keeping things patched and patched ASAP.

That last part, I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not.

TA-t3 2008-07-11 13:27
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Oh, and what is it with all the Maemo future development projects in the garage closed to the general populous? Are you guys sharing porn and warez in there or something? Development should be open. Open development invites more innovation, better quality if finished product, and a fuzzy feeling.
Out of curiosity, which garage projects are those? The reason I'm asking is that every garage project I've looked at so far have Anonymous Subversion Access as well as Developer Subversion Access links. Maybe I'm not searching for the right projects..?

anidel 2008-07-11 13:34
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201701)
I know there are better ways to ask for things. I didn't choose the worst. I chose to be clear and concise. No beating around the bush, no small suggestions, just saying it how I see it. It sucks. And I DID see the beta on AGPS. And no need to zoom? Ok, you pick out Kansas City on a map of the US with a stylus the size of an ink pen.

And I know I said one last thing too many times because I didn't want to flood the forum with threads.

I want what's best for the community. Right now, the bug-tracker is effectively ineffective to someone like me who likes to browse and see what I can help with. I don't spend my days searching for issues that I think might possibly pop up. I want to see the issues staring me in the face.

And one last thing, Usually the repositories the program resides in also contains all necessary dependencies. You shouldn't have to tell it, that's my point.
It's just the tone that puts you in bad view.
This kind of tone puts everything good you said or suggested a part.

I suggest you to provide feedback to the bugmasters as someone else already suggested here (don't remember the nickname).

As for the AGPS-UI you need to just provide a rough location of where you are. Not an exact city.
And this is something you should add to bugzilla, you hate it or not.
If it's a duplicate of a bug, it'll be noticed when assigned and resolved.
BTW, I think they're already working on alternatives.

sjgadsby 2008-07-11 13:34
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
What is the point of a bug tracking system where you have to search for problems instead of reading about them? A person should just be able to hit Bugzilla on the Maemo homepage and see a list of bugs. That way, issues that need fixing get visibility. Look at the tracking system that Ubuntu has with Launchpad.
I'm interested in getting more Internet Tablet users involved in submitting, adding information to, and voting upon bugs, so I'd like to read your ideas for improvements. Your posting conveys a great deal of passion, which is a wonderful driver. I'd appreciate it now if you could step back and provide some detail so your speed can be made velocity.

I see the landing page for the Ubuntu bug tracking system displays a list of 75 out of (at the time of this writing) 47,312 bugs. While the 75 do appear to be those bugs considered most important, it's not immediately obvious to me how this eliminates the need to search that mass of 47,000+ bugs. I expect the "Filters", "Tags", and "Release-critical bugs" selectors in the left column may be used to provide some focus. However, I question whether visually scanning a list of 2,937 "Tags" for a suitable choice provides any advantage over a search box.

Would you please provide more detail on how Launchpad is
Quote:
Excellent. Flexible. USEABLE.
and how maemo Bugzilla could be improved? I'd greatly appreciate it.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 13:35
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TA-t3 (Post 201710)
Out of curiosity, which garage projects are those? The reason I'm asking is that every garage project I've looked at so far have Anonymous Subversion Access as well as Developer Subversion Access links. Maybe I'm not searching for the right projects..?
Why only subversion? why must you sign up for some projects? This is a Debian-based distro, is it not?

example of restricted access project:

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/maemotesting/

brontide 2008-07-11 13:42
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/dsm/

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 13:47
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by anidel (Post 201713)
It's just the tone that puts you in bad view.
This kind of tone puts everything good you said or suggested a part.

I suggest you to provide feedback to the bugmasters as someone else already suggested here (don't remember the nickname).

As for the AGPS-UI you need to just provide a rough location of where you are. Not an exact city.
And this is something you should add to bugzilla, you hate it or not.
If it's a duplicate of a bug, it'll be noticed when assigned and resolved.
BTW, I think they're already working on alternatives.
Well, I know I was being blunt, it's 8:30 am and I haven't gone to bed yet. No energy for fluff or ***-kissing.

It was more of a "What the hell, why did you guys let this place get so out of date and useless?" Kind of post. Look at it this way, the most active community isn't even the officially sanctioned community by Nokia. Nokia's IT-OS forum shouldn't even exist is is so useless.

There are two wikis, one that is unkempt and half-broken; one new one that is a pretty shade of white and nothing else at the moment.

But the one thing I just don't understand is how they've managed to get this far with a bug-tracking system that is utterly outdated, secretive, unintuitive, counterproductive, and just plain useless to anyone but the original bug submitter who gets zero community visibility because nobody knows his or her problem is even there.

In my opinion, which is pretty insignifigant, we should just use Launchpad so fixes for other distros get propagated to Maemo quicker and from a vastly larger pool of knowledge and to also harbor better interoperability with other software.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 13:50
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
I forgot to mention that there is a Launchpad area for Maemo, but the project name is cheese and there approximately 5 bug reports listed.

Bundyo 2008-07-11 14:10
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
@Mutiny: The wikis are two for specific reasons, discussed not so long ago in this forum.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-11 16:38
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
For lack of a better word.
That's an opinion that has a lot to do with perspective, I suppose. If you want to see a bug tracking system that "sucks...badly" see the Garage tracker.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
How old is it?
2005, it got a major overhaul in 2007 (thanks to timeless's hard work) and is undergoing a major overhaul as we speak.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
What is the point of a bug tracking system where you have to search for problems instead of reading about them? A person should just be able to hit Bugzilla on the Maemo homepage and see a list of bugs.
This is something that's somewhere on the list for improvement, but it's not really a simple procedure, as a lot of stuff needs to be ported over to our Bugzilla. The GNOME Bugzilla has essentially what you're talking about.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
That way, issues that need fixing get visibility. Look at the tracking system that Ubuntu has with Launchpad. Excellent. Flexible. USEABLE.
Out of interest, do you actively triage bugs anywhere? While Launchpad may be more inviting to some newbies, it definitely not as effective a bug tracking system as Bugzilla for the people that actually have to do the work.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Even Bugzilla itself, in its latest incarnation by Mozilla is easy to use.
What about Mozilla's Bugzilla is easier to use? Concrete examples and suggestions for improvement go a lot farther than froth-at-the-mouth rants. We have two guys very able to make this stuff happen (Andre and Karsten, the new bugmasters), and we have a lot of people willing to help them out. My suggestion to you is to open up a task on the wiki. Drop the attitude and start getting together a plan for real improvements. :)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Why must Maemo's be so convoluted and purpose-defeating? You click on Maemo's Bugzilla link and it brings you to a page where you have to SEARCH for issues? What? How does that accomplish anything?
Well, generally speaking, when you're dealing with a large volume of bugs, visual overviews aren't all that helpful. Searching with a few appropriate keywords tends to bring you what you want faster.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Bugtrackers are there for a reason. Visibility, collaboration, and quicker resolution. Ours is akin to going "Hmm, I wonder if the ssl package in Diablo crashes MicroB whe you visit pages with Javascript? I think I'll search for it. That is bass ackwards.
Personally, I disagree. Searching is pretty much the only way to effectively get what you're after. It's certainly a helluva lot faster than browsing through almost 4000 bugs.

Think of it this way, though, the overviews Launchpad offers are just searches, and you can achieve the same sort of effect with custom searches in Bugzilla. There are three that I recommend everybody have a list of all bugs created in the last 2 days, a list of all bugs updated in the last 2 days, and (no link on this one) a list of all bugs I created.

From that, a useful suggestion you might want to put into your wiki task would be, "Include this search, this search, and this search as default saved searches (and as links from the front page for non-registered users). Then also embed this search and this search directly into the front page."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Oh, and what is it with all the Maemo future development projects in the garage closed to the general populous? Are you guys sharing porn and warez in there or something? Development should be open. Open development invites more innovation, better quality if finished product, and a fuzzy feeling.
Huh? Who is "you guys". This is clearly a Nokia question, but isn't really all that relevant moving forward, as they've already committed to alpha and beta releases of the Fremantle SDK.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
One last thing. Don't hide or password-protect your development repositories. That is idiotic. If you don't want the public seeing your unfinished product, then why is there even a repo out there?
Three big reasons, because it's hard to distribute software to global internal beta-testing programs completely internally, idiot users tend to freak out when they use beta software that's actually beta, and because there are many components of Maemo which are Nokia proprietary. Heck, I'm glad they did it this way. The community people that have the background to understand what a beta release means get access to it early, file bugs and help to make the release product that much better, while the people without the background to understand what they're getting themselves into don't get themselves into trouble.

Besides, again, this is largely nullified moving forward as they'll be releasing development versions of the Fremantle SDK.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
If you want to help Maemo fulfill its potential, stop putting up roadblocks.
Yes, generally putting up roadblocks to progress is a bad plan. ;)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
An example being the A-GPS app.
Uh, what about A-GPS Beta for Nokia N810 doesn't make sense to you?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
One last thing...Apt-get is supposed to solve dependency hell by getting dependencies for files you want to install. Why doesn't the package manager do this for me? A lot of stuff is non-installable because...you guessed it...missing dependencies! Well, then, why don't you go get them for me so I can stop being frustrated that I can't find your specific version of glib or whatever?
This is exactly how apt and the Application manager work. It has a list of places to look for packages, and installs those packages from them if it needs to. The question you're really asking is, "How can I make the package manager magical and precient?". Tell me, how is it supposed to find dependencies if you don't tell it where to look (i.e., the repositories you have installed).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201678)
Fix these things. Right now they are a waste of resources.:rolleyes:
There are lots of very active community people working on these things (both in their spare time and as part-time contractors for Nokia), putting down their work with flippant remarks like this doesn't help anybody. :)

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-11 16:40
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by brontide (Post 201690)
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.
Yes, Nokia's decision to do the bug tracking on even their open components internally is an unfortunate one. Thankfully, this is something that's going to improve (and has improved a lot already) moving forward thanks to the tireless efforts of people like Andre and Karsten.

See bug #630 for a little background.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 23:43
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 201795)
That's an opinion that has a lot to do with perspective, I suppose. If you want to see a bug tracking system that "sucks...badly" see the Garage tracker.



2005, it got a major overhaul in 2007 (thanks to timeless's hard work) and is undergoing a major overhaul as we speak.



This is something that's somewhere on the list for improvement, but it's not really a simple procedure, as a lot of stuff needs to be ported over to our Bugzilla. The GNOME Bugzilla has essentially what you're talking about.



Out of interest, do you actively triage bugs anywhere? While Launchpad may be more inviting to some newbies, it definitely not as effective a bug tracking system as Bugzilla for the people that actually have to do the work.



What about Mozilla's Bugzilla is easier to use? Concrete examples and suggestions for improvement go a lot farther than froth-at-the-mouth rants. We have two guys very able to make this stuff happen (Andre and Karsten, the new bugmasters), and we have a lot of people willing to help them out. My suggestion to you is to open up a task on the wiki. Drop the attitude and start getting together a plan for real improvements. :)



Well, generally speaking, when you're dealing with a large volume of bugs, visual overviews aren't all that helpful. Searching with a few appropriate keywords tends to bring you what you want faster.



Personally, I disagree. Searching is pretty much the only way to effectively get what you're after. It's certainly a helluva lot faster than browsing through almost 4000 bugs.

Think of it this way, though, the overviews Launchpad offers are just searches, and you can achieve the same sort of effect with custom searches in Bugzilla. There are three that I recommend everybody have a list of all bugs created in the last 2 days, a list of all bugs updated in the last 2 days, and (no link on this one) a list of all bugs I created.

From that, a useful suggestion you might want to put into your wiki task would be, "Include this search, this search, and this search as default saved searches (and as links from the front page for non-registered users). Then also embed this search and this search directly into the front page."



Huh? Who is "you guys". This is clearly a Nokia question, but isn't really all that relevant moving forward, as they've already committed to alpha and beta releases of the Fremantle SDK.



Three big reasons, because it's hard to distribute software to global internal beta-testing programs completely internally, idiot users tend to freak out when they use beta software that's actually beta, and because there are many components of Maemo which are Nokia proprietary. Heck, I'm glad they did it this way. The community people that have the background to understand what a beta release means get access to it early, file bugs and help to make the release product that much better, while the people without the background to understand what they're getting themselves into don't get themselves into trouble.

Besides, again, this is largely nullified moving forward as they'll be releasing development versions of the Fremantle SDK.



Yes, generally putting up roadblocks to progress is a bad plan. ;)



Uh, what about A-GPS Beta for Nokia N810 doesn't make sense to you?



This is exactly how apt and the Application manager work. It has a list of places to look for packages, and installs those packages from them if it needs to. The question you're really asking is, "How can I make the package manager magical and precient?". Tell me, how is it supposed to find dependencies if you don't tell it where to look (i.e., the repositories you have installed).



There are lots of very active community people working on these things (both in their spare time and as part-time contractors for Nokia), putting down their work with flippant remarks like this doesn't help anybody. :)
Well, I'm better rested and in a nicer mood, but not in a rant and rave mode.

What I'm saying about the package manager is that a lot of stuff can't be installed because the dependencies which the developers of the package didn't put into the repo. It DOES know where to look, but those deps aren't there and they should be. That just boils down to laziness on the dev's part and assumptions that its there somewhere.

The A-GPS Beta I can understand. But I do have to say, releasing something that even I, a well-versed user, has complaints about that the normal user would completely be lost in, like...how exactly is it aGPS? it is not tower-assisted and offloaded, and terra-location cannot be considered a legitimate definition of aGPS, because IPs are not statically assigned to geographical locations. I would call it more of a "GPS helper" than aGPS. A simple zip or postal code input or at least a map with some zoom and borders would infinitely make this program better and more useful.

A bugtracker where you have to search for bugs is not good. A private internal bugtracker for OSS should be immediately discouraged. I am familiar with Nokia's bad habits about this with my experience with supporting IPSO. When a fortune 50 company wants to see the bug and fix documentation from the devs who aren't allowed to release internal engineering documentation (Even though it's Berkley licensed) and you're stuck in the middle, things get ugly fast, especially in the case of IPSO 4.1 Build 016. This detracts from priority issues because nobody can confirm and triage bugs if they don't know they even exist or what the problem was. By the way, yes, I triage bugs. I'm not a programmer, but I try to help as much as I can in improving OSS.

And as for my pessimistic and resentful attitude? It's good to stir the pot sometimes. Complacency and smugness can harbor stagnation of a project and give some people a sense of superiority in their opinions over others. One thing I don't appreciate is an egotistical developer who can't be wrong.

Plus, sometimes harsh and realistic opinions can make people think, "Damn, the pot's starting to boil, I had better get off my *** and before we have an uprising."

I really think you are extremely level-headed, generalantilles and I respect your input on things, but sometimes you have to give some tough love.:)

But I still think hiding development code from the power userbase is dumb and should be discouraged and questioned at every corner. I understand some of it is propreitary and can live with that, but Nokia's going to eventually have to give it up to compete, especially with Google's promise of complete openness of Android by its release later this year and other rapidly encroaching fully open projects on the heels of Maemo. Maemo has to adapt to survive.

Plus plus P.S. And one last thing for this post, OSS is all about opinions and ideas. That will always lead to conflict. It's human nature. I think I'll stick around here some more and call Nokia, Maemo, and whoever else on what I see are faults.:)

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 23:46
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bundyo (Post 201727)
@Mutiny: The wikis are two for specific reasons, discussed not so long ago in this forum.
I know, but only because I took some time to find out. Joe Schmoe looking at them would think they were a joke because of the lack of content and usability.

Mutiny32 2008-07-11 23:53
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 201798)
Yes, Nokia's decision to do the bug tracking on even their open components internally is an unfortunate one. Thankfully, this is something that's going to improve (and has improved a lot already) moving forward thanks to the tireless efforts of people like Andre and Karsten.

See bug #630 for a little background.
While I'm glad they are making this a top priority, the initial bug report is over two years old. TWO YEARS. That in itself shows the ineffectiveness of a bugtracking system when it takes two years to have someone finally go "Yeah, we really should do this, I'll get right on it."

I'm from Missouri, and our state motto is "Show Me," as in, "I'll believe when I see it." We are skeptics.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-11 23:55
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201973)
Plus, sometimes harsh and realistic opinions can make people think, "Damn, the pot's starting to boil, I had better get off my *** and before we have an uprising."

I really think you are extremely level-headed, generalantilles and I respect your input on things, but sometimes you have to give some tough love.:)
I really don't have the energy to respond to all of this, but, suffice to say, you should probably consider involving yourself a bit in the process before you make sweeping judgements about who and what. :)

Mutiny32 2008-07-12 00:17
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 201978)
I really don't have the energy to respond to all of this, but, suffice to say, you should probably consider involving yourself a bit in the process before you make sweeping judgements about who and what. :)
Just because I have only recently started talking doesn't mean I don't know anything about the project or Nokia. I find it amazing that Nokia themselves independently develop at least three flavors of Linux/BSD.

Maemo, OpenBSD IPSO, and Linux-based IPSO. I believe there's a redhat based variant in there somewhere, but I'm not sure.

I just happen to see problems that are stifling a lot of progress and allowing competitors chip away at their user-base because of it.

I've always been unhappy about their approach to making software accessible. It has the potential to to cause a big headache for customers and I know it first hand when you are on call and some big customer is panicking and screaming and swearing at you on 3 am on a Sunday morning because of a software issue and you can't easily get it from Nokia because their support site and software updates require registration, sponsorship, and human approval before you can maybe get the fix.

For maemo, this isn't something that would likely happen, but when Paypal's $500,000 pair of IP2450's protecting their infrastructure are flapping because of a memory leak that reached critical mass and is threatening to take them offline, I have issues with it.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-12 00:33
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201986)
Just because I have only recently started talking doesn't mean I don't know anything about the project or Nokia. I find it amazing that Nokia themselves independently develop at least three flavors of Linux/BSD.
I'm not talking about anything besides Maemo and its community, and you can't expect to just jump in and know everything about the history behind today's problems. :)

You've mixed a lot of different issues in your rant here, and placed blame on people that don't deserve it.

If you really want to "stir the pot", send an e-mail to Nokia. Most of the people here can't do anything and don't really feel like reading rants.

Oh, and about the open development, you do realize that all the development on Nokia's non-proprietary stuff is done either upstream on in the SCMs on Garage, right?

Mutiny32 2008-07-12 00:41
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 201992)
I'm not talking about anything besides Maemo and its community, and you can't expect to just jump in and know everything about the history behind today's problems. :)

You've mixed a lot of different issues in your rant here, and placed blame on people that don't deserve it.

If you really want to "stir the pot", send an e-mail to Nokia. Most of the people here can't do anything and don't really feel like reading rants.

Oh, and about the open development, you do realize that all the development on Nokia's non-proprietary stuff is done either upstream on in the SCMs on Garage, right?
You mean those project pages in the garage that say Access Denied when I try to view them? That is the opposite of open. Which is closed.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-12 00:53
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201995)
You mean those project pages in the garage that say Access Denied when I try to view them? That is the opposite of open. Which is closed.
Those are not open projects. Those are Nokia proprietary stuff. If it's open source, it's open, if it's proprietary, it's not. What's hard to understand about that+

brontide 2008-07-12 01:44
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Having owned a 770 and owning a n810, submitted/commented/voted on several bug reports, and developed/ported applications I think I'm a little more seasoned about these issues. Honestly I could care less who is to blame, it really just sucks.

My big problem is that Nokia can't get out of it's own way, let alone drive a sensible development process. Independent development for the platform is a joke with the only good tool being scratchbox ( which can't install on 64bit systems )*, documentation that is spotty at best ( check out the bora docs sometime )**, the bug database does suck***, and a community that is so starved for new ideas that many developers are turned off from the deluge of comments/criticism. Figuring out how to use some of the necessary system libraries is an exercise in frustration. And last, but not least, is a rather convoluted and poorly documented process for uploading and inclusion in the default "Extras" repository. ( yes I know this is getting better, but better than sucks doesn't say a lot ).

I have already been flamed for calling the entire platform "BETA" with calls to "Wait for Diablo"..... well it's here and I don't think Nokia has made any great strides with it's QA process.

My honest opinion is the whole platform really kinda sucks. Why do I stick with it? Because right now it sucks *LESS* than anything else that is out there right now and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks this way. This makes the whole platform an easy target as people will flee like rats from a sinking ship once a better technology comes around. We have already seen the iSheep and eeePC stealing users left and right, just wait till Android really hits the streets with a sane development system and good hardware.

The NIT's *COULD* have been great. I would never recommend them to anyone, but those people that have seen me use one think the idea is great and are flabbergasted to find out that they have been making them for years without promoting them.

* Scratchbox2 development is coming along, but at what pace?; Yes I know about the VM, but last I checked it's chinook SDK, not DIABLO.

** Yes, trying to be a good developer and make my stuff work under OS2007

*** Bugs with more than 15 votes sorted by bug number ( date ) I think it's crazy that bugs listed as major defects have wallowed for two years. Enhancements like being able to customize the clock to 12/24 hours have languished for well over 2 years, and proper ogg support has been there for almost 3 years.

Mutiny32 2008-07-12 02:05
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 202003)
Those are not open projects. Those are Nokia proprietary stuff. If it's open source, it's open, if it's proprietary, it's not. What's hard to understand about that+
That's a lot of propreitary software, and most of the projects with the highest activity are closed off. How can it be open source if you can't even participate in the development of the software?

And what exactly is so propreitary? I'd like to know.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-12 02:15
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by brontide (Post 202022)
And last, but not least, is a rather convoluted and poorly documented process for uploading and inclusion in the default "Extras" repository. ( yes I know this is getting better, but better than sucks doesn't say a lot ).
You do realize that Extras is pretty much completely community-side now, right? You are 100% enabled to help out here, rather than just complaining, why not dive in and help? There's maybe a half-dozen people actively putting insane amounts of their free time into it, and nobody else. Heck, after the autobuilder was first released there was exactly one person testing it.

Rather than simply dismissing these efforts out of hand, get behind them and help out. Everybody involved is stretched thin and they need all the help they can get. :)

Niels, Ed and Mikhail have been putting an insane amount of time getting the autobuilder into shape and providing community support for it (mostly on IRC and in -developers). There's a lot of places you can lay blame, but on these three guy's heads is not one of them. :)

Jaffa has been putting a lot of time into developing good documentation for the process, which you can find (and help out with) here, and the MUD builder for helping with packaging.

Dismissing these people's (and other's) hard work is really inexcusable.

brontide 2008-07-12 14:43
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 202037)
Rather than simply dismissing these efforts out of hand, get behind them and help out. Everybody involved is stretched thin and they need all the help they can get. :)
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 ).

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-12 18:26
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by brontide (Post 202182)
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.
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brontide (Post 202182)
The fact that the community is forced to pick up the pieces from each botched Nokia release is annoying.
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.

Mutiny32 2008-07-13 00:55
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 202242)
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.
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.

GeneralAntilles 2008-07-13 01:12
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 202325)
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.
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 202325)
By the way, the bugtracker still sucks. Just try the search string "powervr" and see how far you get.
This is just inane. :rolleyes:

sjgadsby 2008-07-13 01:38
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 202325)
You don't see Debian doing this, you don't see Ubuntu doing this...
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.

qgil 2008-07-13 20:10
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

Andre Klapper 2008-07-14 09:02
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.

TA-t3 2008-07-14 11:31
Re: The bug tracking system sucks...badly
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny32 (Post 201715)
Why only subversion? why must you sign up for some projects? This is a Debian-based distro, is it not?

example of restricted access project:

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/maemotesting/
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..


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