[MacPorts] #11376: Tracker discourages use

Tue Dec 18 10:36:00 PST 2007

#11376: Tracker discourages use
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  stephen at xemacs.org  |       Owner:  jmpp at macports.org
      Type:  defect              |      Status:  new              
  Priority:  Normal              |   Milestone:                   
 Component:  infrastructure      |     Version:                   
Resolution:                      |    Keywords:                   
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------
Old description:

> Trac may be wonderful, but what I wonder is how regular users can stand
> it!
>
> 1. Trac forgets my login when following most links.  I'm not really sure
> what's going on here, because it doesn't always do this.  For example, if
> I enter "http://www.macports.org/", then go there, it remembers earlier
> logins in the current browser sessin, and if there is no login session,
> the password memory makes logging in easy.  Both facilities fail when I
> follow links into the tracker.  Maybe it's that trac doesn't live at
> www.macports.org, but at trac.macports.org, and my browser doesn't send
> the cookie.
>
> 2. ''All'' trac pages should have a New Bug button.
>
> 3. Many displays assume I have space for a 1200 pixel width window.  (a)
> I don't on several of my workstations (subnotebooks), and (b) I am not a
> fan of letting any application take over my entire screen, especially not
> one subject to network delays.
>
> 4. This wouldn't be so bad (the wide display does contain a lot of
> information, and it's quite useful to keep it on one line), except that a
> lot of useful controls are right-justified and end up off-screen (login,
> search).
>
> 5. There's no easy way to search for bugs against a single port.
>
> 6. The custom query as initialized looks for bugs assigned to me.  Make
> that a standard query, for heaven's sake.  The custom query is the only
> available workaround for #5, so you're encouraging users to enter
> duplicate bugs by making it annoying to search for existing bugs.  The
> custom query should be initialized to search the summary.
>
> 7. Ticket properties are insane.  Yes, I've come to "expect" MacPorts to
> throw at least one reportable bug a week, not to mention frequent minor
> annoyances, but what does "Priority: expected" mean in terms of getting
> things ''fixed''?
>
> Version: Most bugs have nothing to do with the version of "port", and
> everything to do with the portfile.  Furthermore, there doesn't seem to
> be a way to express the fact that you're tracking base by subversion,
> which is where you'd expect the most "port" bugs to show up.
>
> Component: is trac "www" or "infrastructure"?  Does "Uninstaller" really
> need its own component?
>
> Severity: hardly seems the right way to describe an enum of "Crash/data
> loss", "Serious", "Security", "Performance", "Other".
>
> Keywords: What keywords are acceptable?
>
> 8. Help isn't very visible.
>
> 9. Help doesn't describe this tracker in any detail.
>
> 10. Help doesn't describe this tracker accurately (it implies that
> Priority/Severity should not be separate properties).

New description:

 Trac may be wonderful, but what I wonder is how regular users can stand
 it!

 1. Trac forgets my login when following most links.  I'm not really sure
 what's going on here, because it doesn't always do this.  For example, if
 I enter "http://www.macports.org/", then go there, it remembers earlier
 logins in the current browser sessin, and if there is no login session,
 the password memory makes logging in easy.  Both facilities fail when I
 follow links into the tracker.  Maybe it's that trac doesn't live at
 www.macports.org, but at trac.macports.org, and my browser doesn't send
 the cookie.

 2. ~~''All'' trac pages should have a New Bug button.~~

 3. Many displays assume I have space for a 1200 pixel width window.  (a) I
 don't on several of my workstations (subnotebooks), and (b) I am not a fan
 of letting any application take over my entire screen, especially not one
 subject to network delays.

 4. This wouldn't be so bad (the wide display does contain a lot of
 information, and it's quite useful to keep it on one line), except that a
 lot of useful controls are right-justified and end up off-screen (login,
 search).

 5. There's no easy way to search for bugs against a single port.

 6. ~~The custom query as initialized looks for bugs assigned to me.  Make
 that a standard query, for heaven's sake.  The custom query is the only
 available workaround for #5, so you're encouraging users to enter
 duplicate bugs by making it annoying to search for existing bugs.  The
 custom query should be initialized to search the summary.~~

 7. ~~Ticket properties are insane.  Yes, I've come to "expect" MacPorts to
 throw at least one reportable bug a week, not to mention frequent minor
 annoyances, but what does "Priority: expected" mean in terms of getting
 things ''fixed''?~~

 ~~Version: Most bugs have nothing to do with the version of "port", and
 everything to do with the portfile.  Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be
 a way to express the fact that you're tracking base by subversion, which
 is where you'd expect the most "port" bugs to show up.~~

 ~~Component: is trac "www" or "infrastructure"?  Does "Uninstaller" really
 need its own component?~~

 ~~Severity: hardly seems the right way to describe an enum of "Crash/data
 loss", "Serious", "Security", "Performance", "Other".~~

 ~~Keywords: What keywords are acceptable?~~

 8. Help isn't very visible.

 9. ~~Help doesn't describe this tracker in any detail.~~

 10. ~~Help doesn't describe this tracker accurately (it implies that
 Priority/Severity should not be separate properties).~~

Comment (by jmpp at macports.org):

 It should be noted that this ticket spans multiple issues and the
 preferred way to report them is one issue per ticket. Nevertheless, since
 discussion already happened on this ticket, I'm going to comment on each
 of the points raised and will cross them out of the original description
 if already fixed:

  1. This is a Mac OS Forge issue related to virtual hostnames, if I'm not
 mistaken, and there's nothing the MacPorts team can do about it. I don't
 think it's fixed, as I've personally seen jumps from http based URLs to
 https ones, from trac.macports.org based URLs to trac.macosforge.org ones,
 and even from and to svn.macports.org URLs (with the /projects/macports
 path). Tickets #10665 and #13428 are presumably related to this issue.

  2. This is fixed, crossed out from the original description.

  3. See 4 below.

  4. I'd love it if our Trac portal could be unified into the look of our
 new website, but I'm not too sure this is possible. Mac OS Forge personnel
 has to get back to us on this one, but I'd think they still have more
 pressing matters to attend to so this might be a low priority issue.

  5. If you could provide the SQL glue to build up per port queries I'd
 happily set them up at the
 [http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/query query] page. Maybe the
 TracReports page might come in handy for this.

  6. You mean to make the query that searches for tickets assigned to the
 logged in user a standard
 [http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/report report]? If so, then
 {7} and {8} serve that purpose, but you have to be logged in for them to
 work. In any case, I don't see how this helps with item 5 above. Lastly,
 what do you mean by initializing the custom query to search the summary?
 Its initialization doesn't take any user input parameters, so it's hard to
 search the summary for anything in particular. Custom query initializes to
 tickets assigned to the logged in user, displaying the summary among other
 ticket fields, so I'd say this is also covered for. Crossing out from
 original description.

  7. Ticket properties have been standardized to the most common values:
 "Priorities" range from High to Low, including "Not set"; "Version" should
 always match the version of MacPorts you're using, with the svn trunk
 version always being $current_release + 1 (which is always accounted for
 in the "Version" property of tickets), or simply not set ("blank") for
 issues unrelated to MacPorts releases (like the guide or website); Trac
 belongs to the infrastructure component, Installer is no longer a valid
 component; the "Severity" property has been removed; for a particular
 report, any keyword which you might think is related to the issue itself
 and/or might help find it through Trac searches is an appropriate value
 for the corresponding field. Reading our
 [http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets ticketing guidelines] will
 help in understanding our workflow. Crossing out from original
 description.

  8. If you mean the Help link on the sidebar, then this is more than
 anything related to the visual design of our Trac portal, see item 4 above
 in my reply.

  9. That help link is about Trac itself. When you say "describe this
 tracker" I can only assume you are referring to a description of MacPorts
 itself and our particular Trac workflow. Our new [http://www.macports.org
 web page] and [http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets ticketing
 guidelines] fill that void. Crossing out from original description.

  10. We don't maintain that help document and, above all, "Severity" is no
 longer a valid ticket property for us. Crossing out from original
 description.

  11. (from the first ticket comment) Assigning to a port  maintainer is as
 simple as selecting his/her e-mail address from the "Assign to" pop-up
 menu for the corresponding ticket property. even though currently not all
 maintainers are listed in that menu, as per the discussion in ticket
 #13352. Nevertheless, the facility to assign tickets is there and readily
 available, so this issue is also covered for.

 -jmpp

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/11376#comment:5>
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