On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 13:40 -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote:
Charles Curley wrote:
>> You aren't expecting every maintainer to subscribe to user lists
>> and follow all the threads here. Do you? Very very few people have
>> the time to do this and mailing lists are not a good place to keep
>> track of bugs which is why bugzilla exists.
>
> Yes, as a matter of fact, I do expect them to subscribe to this
> list. Not because they are maintainers per se, but because
> presumably they are users as well. It would be a bit difficult to
> maintain a package without using Fedora. Of course I could be wrong,
> which would explain the state of the Mantis package.
But not all users will gain from reading the messages on this list.
Certainly most folks capable of maintaining packages would get bored
reading the many questions by folks that are new users, especially if
they don't have time to help out with answering those questions.
You may well know what the package to maintainer ratio is in Fedora.
If not, it's rather large, with nearly 4700 source packages in the
distro and a little other 400 maintainers. I don't think it's all
that unreasonable to ask that users help out by reporting bugs to
bugzilla.
I do understand your hesitation of the package seems so full of bugs
that it's pointless. However, if that doesn't get bugzilla'd, then
other maintainers may not find out for a while that something is
horribly awry in the mantis package and that someone needs some help
(or a smack with the cluestick). So, a bugzilla may be the most
helpful thing you could do for a terribly broken package, even if it
just says that there are numerous problems (listing them briefly) with
the package and the whole things needs work.
I agree that bugzilla should work but
it has never worked for me. I file
bugzillas and nothing much happens. By the time we get through all the
requests for further info a new distribution is out and it makes no
difference.
I will admit some bugzilla reports are resolved but I have never been
that lucky.
I will go further and explain in what situation it is useless to
bugzilla. When you problem is more or less unique to your system. If a
large fraction on users are having the same problem that your chances of
getting an answer are better.
--
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The world needs more people like us and fewer like them.
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam(a)sbcglobal.net