Bug tracking

Introduction

GForge is a feature-rich system for collaborating on a software project (GForge homepage). Under the GForge setup by Intevation company, there is a set of trackers for the GRASS project, including 9 items:

• code feature requests
• code issues
• code patches
• doc feature requests
• doc issues
• doc patches
• website feature requests
• website issues
• website patches

These are 3 groups of 3 kinds of trackers, each group dedicated to GRASS code, documentation and website matters, respectively. The kinds of trackers include:

feature requests tracker

For new functionality wishes.

issues tracker

For bugs, and "bad features", aka "defects".

patches tracker

For user submitted patches, if the user doesn't have CVS write access but wants to share his fix/improvement, and for patches which shouldn't go into CVS for a reason, but we want to keep the track of them for later.

Participate

The trackers are available for public view, but in order to be able to post (including creating a new report), and to use all the features of the trackers, you need to setup an account at GForge and join the GRASS project at GForge.

How it works

All trackers' new submissions are automatically forwarded to the GRASS development mailing list. The followup traffic is stored in the tracker, and forwarded only to parties discussing the ticket. However, any project member can "monitor" a ticket, or a whole tracker, in order to receive all the related traffic (see GForge manuals).

When an issue is reported and nobody picks it up right away, I (Maciej Sieczka) am the first contact person - trying to gather more info until it is a good material for a developer to work on, if possible; I also do my best to sanitize the trackers content as time allows.

When a patch is submitted, and nobody steps up to take care of it, there are first-contacts too, who'll try to evaluate the patch:

code patches

Jachym Cepicky

website patches

Scott Mitchell

doc patches

Martin Landa

There are 3 project member roles: admin, developer and user.

admin

Manages requests to join the project and maintains the GRASS project's setup at GForge. Currently there are 2 admins: Maciej Sieczka and Bernard Reiter as a backup.

developer

Can do most of the things that admin can. Only that he doesn't have his duties and he can't remove the whole GRASS project. But he still can add/modify/delete trackers as well as delete tickets for good. It was neccessary to provide that much power to developers so that they could move tickets between the trackers. Developers - please use your power wisely and let me know before doing something more intrusive you are not sure about :).

user

Can open new tickets in the trackers, reply to other tickets and monitor, participate in surveys (admin and developer can too, of course).

Buggy bugtracker?

When you spot something wrong or a possible enhacement in the setup of GRASS trackers at GForge, please drop me a line (tutey at o2 dot pl). If it's a bug or a missing feature in the GForge software itself, please report it to wald.intevation.org GForge site maintaners, preferably using their bugtracker. If unsure whether the issue is in the GRASS trackers setup, or in the GForge itself, contact me first.

Current top issues with GForge from the point of view of GRASS team, which hamper info flow and productivity:

• can't CC an email from GForge
• whole discussion included in the email notification = noise
• mail reply doesn't work
• email notifications sent from GForge to GRASS dev ML should also have it's address to reply to

GForge: beyond the trackers

GForge provides many functionalities. Currently we use only the trackers, as all the other functionalities are implemented in the current GRASS infrastructure (besides surveys; maybe there will be some use for them - let's keep them in mind  :) ). However, it is worth rembering that GForge can provide things like discussion forums, mailing lists, ftp space, SVN server and some more.

NOTE, 2007.04.07: according to discussion on GRASS dev ML, migration to SVN is planned soon.

Legacy

The former GRASS Request Tracker can be used to examine the previously resolved issues, and those that were still in progress as the new system was released. It would be good to move all the tickets from the former tracker to the new one, but nodody has volunteered yet. If you are the one, please contact me (Maciej Sieczka) and Bernard Reiter so we can arrange it.

More info

• GForge manuals
• bugtracking page on the GRASS website