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Help Improve the Bug Parade
URL: Javadesktop.org
At 8:22 PM on Nov 5, 2004, Mikael Grev
wrote:
Fresh Jobs for Developers Post a job opportunity
The optimal kind of people you want reporting bugs is the senior Java gurus that not only finds the bugs but also understand if they are fixable and how to fix them. This can in certain situations be almost as smooth as the patch system for OSS projects.
As it stands now, and has been for almost 10 (ten) years, the bug parade is crap. Crap is a hard word but the word I wanted to write would probably get censored. I don't know if I even have to recite the problems, most everyone that have posted a few bugs knows what I'm talking about. Check out the before mentioned thread for examples.
There's even a catch 22 here. Bad bug handling leads to disheartened reporters and disheartened reporters lead to bad or no bug reports. There are ways to create a 'positive spiral', but as usual some eggs have to be broken.
I have a lot of ideas on how the parade can be turned into a source of good high quality interactive place where I'd love to go a report a problem. I will not, as is usually the case, end this post with a bulleted list of ideas, that is what you will do.
Or as Yoda would have put it:
-Post your suggestions on how to improve the Bug parade you will-
You know Sun are listening and they might even shamelessly clone your ideas.
Cheers,
Mikael Grev
ps. The thread I was talking about:
http://www.javadesktop.org/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=6315&tstart=0
7 replies so far (
Post your own)
Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
There needs to be a way to reopen a bug or flag it for review. Some bugs I've seen are marked FIXED when they aren't fixed at all, and some bugs are marked "Will not fix" because the engineer misunderstood the request. Posting comments has never helped, but filing new bug reports has. There needs to be a way to poke a bug to bring Sun's attention to some kind of new development.We need more than 3 votes. Java is huge, and I think 20-50 votes would be good. I personally have 107 bugs on my Watch list. I'd like to be able to vote for all of them, but I'd be happy with being able to vote for a third of them.
We need a way to make sure the engineers themselves see new Comments that are posted.
Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
One word: Jira. Sun should use it, maybe customize it and be proud..Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
I think it would be good to have a first stop of some kind where we can ask others if they are seeing the same thing (a bug for instance). There need only be a single forum that where clearly labeled "Bug Information Exchange" or something (a better name perhaps). Here we can ourselves, and of cource some Sun engeneers, increase the quality of the bug reports by first asking the "community" if they've heard somehing about this problem before.It would increase the quality of the bug reports I think and one can refere to a discussion in the bug report so that the bug report evaluator gets as much info as possible. Otherwise it can be a drag to try to sum it up in the bug report and it will just be left out.
It would also give the Sun engeneers the possibility to "prime" the bug 'to be written' bug report since they can inject valuable information before the evaluator starts evaluation it, and this will probably decrease the number of rejections where the evaluator had too little specific knowledge about a problem.
Cheers,
Mikael
MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
It certainly doesn't have to be perfect; whatever solution they go with. Even a traditional Bugzilla installation would be a vast improvement. It somewhat frightens me that they manage the 'bugs' for the entire underpinnings of the most common JVM distribution AS WELL AS the public JVM API change requests with 'the bug parade'; the worst bug management system currently in use... ANYWHERE.Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
I don't think the answer is technical. A better program is not what sun needs.Here is my fix to the bug parade.
Sun LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. If java is a product then the developers are your customers. Listen to them, they have been telling you for years what they want while you completely ignored them.
If you don't want to listen to them then open source the damned thing and be done with it. Either fix it or let it go.
It's not that hard people.
Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
It amazes me that Sun doesn't see how much money they are wasting because Bug Parade is broken. I've been trying to convince them to fix it for years.Bugs should be publicly visible as soon as they are submitted
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=10&thread=348293
Unfortunately, unlike the great work that Javalobby has done with Javadocs, this is something that only Sun can fix. The good news is there is a large degree of agreement among developers about what is wrong with Bug Parade. Here is what I would suggest:
1. Use issue tracking software to allow the community to submit and vote on problems with Bug Parade. Fix the top vote getters. Repeat.
2. Use a friendlier front end. Jira has been suggested, but I tend to prefer Scarab, because the community could more easily fix any issues with it. Sun could also provide multiple front ends and let each users pick which one he or she prefers.
3. Integrate the community into the bug submission queue, so that Sun evaluators only need to look at bugs that have been clarified, with known reproducability, that the community agrees are bugs.
4. Provide RMI and web service interfaces, so thick clients can be more easily written.
5. Make the publicly available part of the database available via rsync. Some of the database contains confidential information.
Of course the first of these is the most important. Everything else ultimately comes from it.
- Curt
Re: Help Improve the Bug Parade
JIRA! JIRA! JIRA!My 2 cents: Scarab is an ugly issue-tracker, reminicant of what java.net uses. JIRA is a heck of a lot more usable and flexible.