GSoC plugins and the Issue tracker

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

I'm going to be adding feature requests/bug reports to our issue
tracker with respect to the GSoC plugins. This mail is really for our
GSoC people, but may well be relevant to others new to open source
development.

We use the issue tracker to help us track bugs and feature requests.
It is also used to help prioritise work and to indicate that someone
is working on a specific issue.

Adding something to the issue tracker is not an instruction for
someone to do the work described, it is merely a record that some work
needs to be done.

It is up to the Forrest community as a whole to ensure that issues
important to them get addressed. So, our GSoCers should not read the
notification from the issue tracker as an instruction to do  a
specific task. You should tackle the issues you feel are most
important.

That being said, the priority assigned to an issue is a good indicator
of what we (your users) feel is an important issue. You should
certainly consider anything marked as major or above as being worth
tackling if your schedule allows.

We do not use the issue tracker to discuss the issue, that is what the
mailing list is for. We may link back to the list archives from the
issue tracker in order to ensure knowledge about an issue does not get
lost.

If you intend to an a feature, or you find a bug that you are not
going to deal with immediately you should add it to the issue tracker.
This ensures others are aware of the direction you intend to take and
prevents others having to report bugs you are already aware of.

OK, I'm off to the issue tracker now.

Ross

Re: GSoC plugins and the Issue tracker

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Ross Gardler wrote:
> I'm going to be adding feature requests/bug reports to our issue
> tracker with respect to the GSoC plugins. This mail is really for our
> GSoC people, but may well be relevant to others new to open source
> development.
> 
> We use the issue tracker to help us track bugs and feature requests.
> It is also used to help prioritise work and to indicate that someone
> is working on a specific issue.

Thanks for getting us all to use the issue tracker more.

> Adding something to the issue tracker is not an instruction for
> someone to do the work described, it is merely a record that some work
> needs to be done.
> 
> It is up to the Forrest community as a whole to ensure that issues
> important to them get addressed. So, our GSoCers should not read the
> notification from the issue tracker as an instruction to do  a
> specific task. You should tackle the issues you feel are most
> important.
> 
> That being said, the priority assigned to an issue is a good indicator
> of what we (your users) feel is an important issue. You should
> certainly consider anything marked as major or above as being worth
> tackling if your schedule allows.
> 
> We do not use the issue tracker to discuss the issue, that is what the
> mailing list is for. We may link back to the list archives from the
> issue tracker in order to ensure knowledge about an issue does not get
> lost.

Also just mentioning the "FOR-*" number and title
in email helps with searching.

By the way, remember to use the "ForrestBar":
http://forrest.apache.org/tools/forrestbar.html

Among other things, ForrestBar provides direct search
of our Jira Issues, where you can later refine the search.
Also email search, so will find mail that mentions
the issue number.

> If you intend to an a feature, or you find a bug that you are not
> going to deal with immediately you should add it to the issue tracker.
> This ensures others are aware of the direction you intend to take and
> prevents others having to report bugs you are already aware of.
> 
> OK, I'm off to the issue tracker now.

Please see the overview:
http://forrest.apache.org/issues.html
especially the Guidelines section.

-David