...Controversial questions:
- Should we eliminate the bug tracker entirely and just do all
discussion and patches on the mailing list? ...
- Or, alternatively, should we eliminate the bulk of mailing list
traffic, and insist on issues in the bug tracker being the main
conversational forum for the whole community?
Tradeoffs between push (mailing list) vs pull (bug tracker) seem like
a very person-specific preference. Why enforce one or the other?
Also, I know it's slightly off-topic, but it seems like the
alternatives you're offering are what people use frequently today as
opposed to the way things should be (and what new tools are under
development in those directions). For example I've been using ditz (a
distributed bug tracker that uses git or hg to manage bugs) on a small
project lately and enjoying it. It's not polished or maintained enough
to warrant using it on a large project, but I mention it because I
think it's an indication of how bug tracking might change over the
next few years... It would be nice to have local bugs that I don't
push to the community but which help me track my own progress.
I also happen to think that, besides becoming distributed, bug
tracking systems will change in another way: they will more clearly
differentiate between technical vs. narrative bug reports and handle
both types. Currently, the strategies for handling bug reports from
users is either (a) users can file bugs and many useless reports are
filed or (b) users cannot file bugs and many problems are never
brought to the attention of developers. I suspect (if it hasn't
already happened) that a system for collecting **and mining**
narrative reports (as told in the voice of the user, many stack traces
with similar failures, etc.) will be developed that can tie to a
technical issue tracker that is curated by developers (details of the
problem and progress on it).
My 1 to 3 cents,
David
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