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Posted to dev@pdfbox.apache.org by "martijn.list" <ma...@gmail.com> on 2010/11/29 11:43:17 UTC
JIRA bug cleanup?
JIRA contains a lot of bug reports (410 open bugs) which are probably no
longer valid because the bugs have already been fixed. I have looked to
a couple of them an most of the bugs were already fixed. I think it
would be a good idea to take some time to close the bugs that are either
fixed or are really old. I have already commented on a couple of bugs
that the bug has already been fixed but only the person(s) responsible
for bug management can close the bugs.
Kind regards,
Martijn Brinkers
RE: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by "Martinez, Mel - 1004 - MITLL" <m....@ll.mit.edu>.
Ultimately, this problem falls on other people's shoulders, not mine, so I
only offer this as hopefully helpful advice.
What you are saying here is technically and procedurally correct. But I've
been doing this (software development) for well over 2 decades and my
experience tells me that there is a critical mass beyond which this is
simply not practical.
To Adam's point below: the 'age' should not be based on the date of the
initial report, but rather the last activity (comment, update, whatever).
Whether there is sufficient information to reproduce is sort of irrelevant.
As a practical manner, you want to manage the work that you organizationally
can and will do. Not the work that you would do if time & resources were
infinite. If there has been no activity on an issue for a long time, there
becomes a very high probability, no matter WHAT level of information is
captured in the report, that it will simply not ever be acted upon.
No matter what the level of detail of the information, after a long time,
the _relevancy_ of that information also becomes suspect. Unless the
information can be verified as applicable to current revisions - which
requires manually confirm that it does, then it may not be useful
information at all.
So, to Jukka's a - b- c checks below, the problem is, if you have a zillion
old, inactive issues, many stemming from versions prior to major revisions,
then who is going to go back and apply those checks to each issue?
PDFBox has 408 'open' issues. Only 165 of them have been updated in the
last year. That's 243 old issues, that no one has touched in a full year,
that each would need someone to look at and make the a - b - c assessment
on.
My contention is that that is not necessary. Old, inactive issues are not
truly 'open' in the practical sense because the community has not mentally
kept them open - only the issue tracker has. IF an old issue resurfaces as
something that needs to be addressed, then either a new issue can be created
or the old one can be re-opened.
Closing an issue as 'stale' does not mean the information is lost. It
simply removes it as part of the noise when you are looking at open issues
and trying to prioritize. It is still searchable in Jira and retrievable and
if necessary can be re-opened.
As I said, it is not really my personal burden that I am trying to make
lighter here with this advice. I am just trying to help here.
Ultimately, you committers know how much time & effort you can afford to put
towards issue management so it is your call.
I will go along with and support whatever you guys decide.
Cheers,
-Mel
-----Original Message-----
From: Jukka Zitting [mailto:jzitting@adobe.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 4:35 AM
To: dev@pdfbox.apache.org
Subject: Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Hi,
On 02/12/10 00:20, Adam@swmc.com wrote:
> If there's enough information to confirm the problem, then it should stay
> open no matter what the age of the report. If there's not enough info
> then we post a comment to try to get more info; if we can't get enough
> information then close it as "unable to reproduce". Just my two cents...
+1 I wouldn't mass-resolve old issues as there's still value in there.
If people are checking whether you still can reproduce an old problem,
it would be good to also add a note in the issue that you've done so.
Basically:
a) can reproduce -> note which version you tried
b) can not reproduce -> resolve as unable to reproduce
c) not enough information -> resolve as incomplete
The difference between b and c is whether the issue contains enough
information to even try reproducing the problem. For example we have
many issues with no test documents or other test cases (manual or in
code), which should probably be resolved as incomplete unless it's
obvious what the problem is (like if there's an NPE stack trace with
line numbers, etc.).
BR,
Jukka Zitting
Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by Jukka Zitting <jz...@adobe.com>.
Hi,
On 02/12/10 00:20, Adam@swmc.com wrote:
> If there's enough information to confirm the problem, then it should stay
> open no matter what the age of the report. If there's not enough info
> then we post a comment to try to get more info; if we can't get enough
> information then close it as "unable to reproduce". Just my two cents...
+1 I wouldn't mass-resolve old issues as there's still value in there.
If people are checking whether you still can reproduce an old problem,
it would be good to also add a note in the issue that you've done so.
Basically:
a) can reproduce -> note which version you tried
b) can not reproduce -> resolve as unable to reproduce
c) not enough information -> resolve as incomplete
The difference between b and c is whether the issue contains enough
information to even try reproducing the problem. For example we have
many issues with no test documents or other test cases (manual or in
code), which should probably be resolved as incomplete unless it's
obvious what the problem is (like if there's an NPE stack trace with
line numbers, etc.).
BR,
Jukka Zitting
Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by Ad...@swmc.com.
If there's enough information to confirm the problem, then it should stay
open no matter what the age of the report. If there's not enough info
then we post a comment to try to get more info; if we can't get enough
information then close it as "unable to reproduce". Just my two cents...
----
Thanks,
Adam
From:
"martijn.list" <ma...@gmail.com>
To:
dev@pdfbox.apache.org
Date:
12/01/2010 13:12
Subject:
Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
On 11/29/2010 05:45 PM, Martinez, Mel - 1004 - MITLL wrote:
> In managing similar situations in the past, involving projects with a
large
> legacy codebase that had been migrated through some upheavals, I have
found
> that it is sometimes best to be draconian about old legacy bug reports.
I agree. It's better to close very old bugs for which it's unclear
whether it's still a bug or not.
> Basically, pick a date threshold and a priority threshold and close
> everything that isn't newer or more critical.
Yes I agree.
Do others have an opinion on how to handle the large amount of bug
reports currently in JIRA?
Kind regards,
Martijn
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Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by "martijn.list" <ma...@gmail.com>.
On 11/29/2010 05:45 PM, Martinez, Mel - 1004 - MITLL wrote:
> In managing similar situations in the past, involving projects with a large
> legacy codebase that had been migrated through some upheavals, I have found
> that it is sometimes best to be draconian about old legacy bug reports.
I agree. It's better to close very old bugs for which it's unclear
whether it's still a bug or not.
> Basically, pick a date threshold and a priority threshold and close
> everything that isn't newer or more critical.
Yes I agree.
Do others have an opinion on how to handle the large amount of bug
reports currently in JIRA?
Kind regards,
Martijn
RE: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by "Martinez, Mel - 1004 - MITLL" <m....@ll.mit.edu>.
In managing similar situations in the past, involving projects with a large
legacy codebase that had been migrated through some upheavals, I have found
that it is sometimes best to be draconian about old legacy bug reports.
Basically, pick a date threshold and a priority threshold and close
everything that isn't newer or more critical.
The philosophy has three points:
1) If the bug is already fixed through some other issue, obviously there is
no need to keep it open.
2) If the bug is so minor that no one has deigned to fix it, it maybe
doesn't need to be open.
3) If the bug is important enough that someone will want it fixed, a newer
bug will be created.
This can really help clean up the open issue list dramatically and help
avoid getting overwhelmed by the sheer mass of legacy issues. It obviously
helps with prioritization.
Just a hopefully helpful suggestion.
-Mel
-----Original Message-----
From: Jukka Zitting [mailto:jzitting@adobe.com]
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 6:36 AM
To: dev@pdfbox.apache.org
Subject: Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Hi,
On 29/11/10 11:43, martijn.list wrote:
> JIRA contains a lot of bug reports (410 open bugs) which are probably no
> longer valid because the bugs have already been fixed. I have looked to
> a couple of them an most of the bugs were already fixed. I think it
> would be a good idea to take some time to close the bugs that are either
> fixed or are really old.
+1 We still have a lot of old and not that well categorized bug reports
that we migrated from SourceForge a few years ago. I believe many of
those bugs have already been fixed in trunk. Others should probably be
resolved as incomplete if there's not enough information to determine
whether the bug still occurs in trunk.
> I have already commented on a couple of bugs that the bug has already
> been fixed but only the person(s) responsible for bug management can
> close the bugs.
I added your Jira account to the "Contributor" role for PDFBOX, so you
should now be able to also resolve issues.
BR,
Jukka Zitting
Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by "martijn.list" <ma...@gmail.com>.
> I added your Jira account to the "Contributor" role for PDFBOX, so you
> should now be able to also resolve issues.
Thanks. I will spend some time the coming weeks to clean-up some old bugs.
Kind regards,
Martijn Brinkers
Re: JIRA bug cleanup?
Posted by Jukka Zitting <jz...@adobe.com>.
Hi,
On 29/11/10 11:43, martijn.list wrote:
> JIRA contains a lot of bug reports (410 open bugs) which are probably no
> longer valid because the bugs have already been fixed. I have looked to
> a couple of them an most of the bugs were already fixed. I think it
> would be a good idea to take some time to close the bugs that are either
> fixed or are really old.
+1 We still have a lot of old and not that well categorized bug reports
that we migrated from SourceForge a few years ago. I believe many of
those bugs have already been fixed in trunk. Others should probably be
resolved as incomplete if there's not enough information to determine
whether the bug still occurs in trunk.
> I have already commented on a couple of bugs that the bug has already
> been fixed but only the person(s) responsible for bug management can
> close the bugs.
I added your Jira account to the "Contributor" role for PDFBOX, so you
should now be able to also resolve issues.
BR,
Jukka Zitting