Re: "Bugs" CF?

* Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> Now, if we can easily shove stuff back and forth between the main queue
> and the bug-fix queue, maybe that's not such a big deal. But it doesn't
> seem like the current CF app is really amenable to that; doesn't it for
> example want to leave an entry behind when you move something to another
> CF?

I agree that we'd need to have that capability if we are to go down this
road, but I won't pretend to have any idea about the level of
difficulty. If we're agreed that this is at least reasonable to explore
then we really need to ask Magnus to weigh in when it comes to the
implementation side of things.

Another thought which occured to me, just to throw it out there, was the
idea of a "Next point release" kind of CF, which is perhaps renamed when
to whatever the point release actually is and anything which didn't make
it is bumped to a new CF entry, or something along those lines.

Again, this is brainstorming to try and achieve the goals which I set
out earlier. I'm not sure that I want to spend much more time on it
now, given the impending feature freeze date and the clearly
unattainable amount of work we still have sitting in front of us for it.

> > What we do have, from what I've seen anyway, is an issue where people
> > don't put things into the CF because they don't want to add "new" things
> > to the currently open CF, since it has already "started", and putting a
> > bug fix into the "next" CF would mean no one is going to be looking at
> > it for a month or two, which is pretty obviously confusing for people
> > who are used to the responsiveness provided on -bugs.
>
> I concur that this is a problem. On the other hand, putting something
> into the CF app already implies that you're not expecting it to get dealt
> with right away...

I'm glad to hear that we agree there's an issue here worthwhile of
consideration. I agree that, today, putting something into the CF
system (in any form) implies that it's not going to be handled right
away, and that's perfectly fine for new features, but it's why people
are confused about using the CF system for bug fixes. I'd like to use
the CF system as a way to keep track of bug fix patches but I don't want
that to also mean that we ignore bug fix patches for months (not that I
think we would intentionally, especially if it also showed up on a
mailing list, but I do feel there's a serious risk that we'll drop the
ball on some bug fix patch that went to -hackers; that's what the CF
system was originally built to address in the first place, after all).

Thanks!

Stephen