Re: Learning curves and such (was Re: pgFoundry)

On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 06:25:16PM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 08:04:51AM +1000, Brendan Jurd wrote:
> > On 5/18/05, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
> > > * Brendan Jurd (direvus(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> > > > In the interests of putting my money where my mouth is, I would be
> > > > willing to enlist in the housekeeping effort for this hypothetical new
> > > > system.
> > >
> > > If you're willing to create it, host it, update it and keep it current,
> > > and feel it'd be so worthwhile to people that you'd be willing to
> > > continue to maintain it... Then go for it. You don't need anyone's
> > > approval or even agreement about it. *That* would be putting your money
> > > where your mouth is.
> >
> > I'm detecting sarcasm here, but just in case you're being serious ...
>
> I don't think Stephen was being sarcastic. Such a system would need an
> enormous bootstrap effort. Once it's in place, and having shown its
> usefulness, maybe the community would start using it.
> (Of course no one can make promises on that other than for himself.)

The useful bug tracking systems I've used have also included QA. Any
bug submitted doesn't get accepted without a standalone test case.
That test case is used both to confirm that the bug has been fixed
once it's fixed, and is added into a set of regression tests.

If someone were to create test cases for (some or all of the)
submitted bugs (or handle the management of their creation) and track
which test cases passed (via a tinderbox, or even the existing
build-farm) that'd be a useful thing in itself. I suspect it'd be a
useful thing for someone who has energy to expend on bug-tracking to
do, and probably more immediately useful than anything that requires
all the primary developers to change how they're currently handling
bugs and to-do lists.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Steve