From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Feb 18 01:23:09 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id BAA10387 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 18 Feb 1995 01:23:09 -0800 Received: (from jkh@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id BAA10380 for hackers; Sat, 18 Feb 1995 01:23:09 -0800 Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 01:23:09 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Message-Id: <199502180923.BAA10380@freefall.cdrom.com> To: hackers Subject: query-pr. please! Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hey Paul [and everyone else, since this is of general interest], When we last talked about this, you said that query-pr wasn't going to be trivial due to the fact that it involved pulling in most of the rest of GNATS. Can you please elaborate on this? If that truly is the price, then I would like to argue that we need to seriously consider paying it. The inability for outsiders to get bug report information is really making the whole bug report loop much more difficult than it has to be, and we could eliminate a lot of duplicated bug reports if people could only look first (easily) and see if their problem had already been reported. A lot of our "customers" would also sleep much better knowing what was broken and what wasn't. Naturally, security related bug reports might be screened (we could switch off a keyword) to all but those in a certain permission group, but we can add filters like that when and if they become necessary. Actually, while we're on the subject, let me just be confrontational and say that send-pr sucks and I wish somebody would jump up and down on it with nob-nailed boots. How does it suck? Let me count the ways: 1. It doesn't lend itself well to being both a problem reporting mechanism and a feature submission mechanism. send-pr should be completely decoupled from the concept of "problem" and become instead a general bug/enhancement/feature request submission mechanism. 2. It doesn't accept file attachments, making it useless for submitting new work (or information helpful to a bug report) in a structured way. 3. It's unnecessarily cryptic, and provides the novice bug-reporter little or no help along the way. 4. It provides no easy windows into what's in the database, both locally and remotely. Let me tell you what would really make me happy instead: [fade to dream sequence] I'm Joe Developer. I hack on my source tree regularly and once in awhile I implement something really cool, or port a nifty package. When I do, I want to submit it to "those FreeBSD people" whom I don't really know personally but worship from afar as gods, especially Jordan, who's every posting to -hackers I reverently print out, frame, and place before a small shrine with incense and joss sticks [Hey, this is MY dream sequence, after all! -jkh]. Anyway, so I fire up the `submit' program which prints "Submit! Submit!" a couple of times and then I'm in this nice little ncurses-based form that asks me for my submission's catagory, a short description, the type of copyright, my full name and email address (which will be filled in by default from the GECOS information if and when possible), any additional comments I want to attach and then if I select `attach file', a file requestor comes up and prompts me for all the files to be attached. Once I'm done, it all gets bundled up and sent off to some mysterious place, somehow, and 2 or 3 days later I get back a nice form letter thanking me for my submission, telling me what tracking number it's been assigned and whom to yell at if I don't get back another acknowlegement at some point saying that my submission has been accepted or refused. [disolve, fade to another dream sequence] I'm *Sir* Joe Developer and I know Thompson & Richie personally, I'm godfather to one of Jordan's cats and I'm doing all kinds of great upgrades and stuff to my FreeBSD system. I even have a plaque with my name on it in the FreeBSD Hall of Fame, but the one thing I don't have is a GOD DAMNED INTERNET CONNECTION! Why did my parents have to chose to move to east Angola as missionaries? Why am I still here?? When will the U.S. grant me a friggin' visa?! I'm brilliant! The U.S. companies would love me! I hate the U.S. State Department! Argh!! Oh well. Sigh.. I can't solve those problems today, but I can still give those nice FreeBSD people the fruits of my labors, so I type the same `submit' command except I use the ``--wizard'' flag and also the ``--orig-src and ``--mychanges-are-in '' options and it cleverly goes through and bundles up a "delta", telling those FreeBSD folks just which files I added, changed and deleted and how to reproduce it all on the other end. Then up comes a somewhat shorter screen which says "Hello, Sir Joe! Glad to see you again!" and prompts me for some basic information about the changes, e.g. what they fix or add, how serious the problem they fix is, how much I've tested or have confidence in them ("quality" rating), etc etc. And then the whole kit and kaboodle goes out over that 2400 baud uucp connection I managed to wangle out of the Nabinian agricultural liason's office in exchange for occasionally favorable advance information on the banana crop. Life may be hard, but at least I have the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that my changes will probably be on the next FreeBSD CD I get in the mail (as well as some upcoming CTM snapshot). [fade to yet another dream sequence - geeze! No more pizza right before bed for me!] I'm just J. Lowly Peon, hacking in my room at my mother's house in Gruntville, Illinois, and I find a bug in FreeBSD. Oh my! It's a horrible bug! It's evil and nasty! It eats my little sister when she gets too close to the machine and scribbles all over my hard drive, and I had some really cool GAMES on that hard drive! Misfortune! Lamenting! No backups! I must report this to the FreeBSD people at once! Hmmmm. How do I do that? Oh that's right, it's all part of the help system.. "help!" I type. "Hello, Peon!" says the system. "What can I do for your insignificant worthlessness today?" With fingers trembling on the arrow keys, I select: "Report Problem". Up comes a reassuringly shaded form, one one corner of which is a small logo of a smiling man in greasy overalls and a wrench in one hand. I am led carefully through the steps of describing my system (which it then saves as the default for my next bug report), the circumstances at the time of the crash, the names of all people in the room during the crash, confirmation that the system was truly plugged in and operating at the time of the crash, how much was left of the system afterwards and whether or not I perchance have any attractive *older* sisters who are unmarried and available. I carefully answer all of these questions, typing with two only fingers since I *flunked* typing and anyway my typing teacher was a dried up old prune and I hated her and that entire class and anyway I'll just select "Send bug report" and away it goes through my AOL account! Gee, I hope those FreeBSD people hear my plea! [scene back at FreeBSD World Headquarters] Jordan (leaning back in leather chair, cellular hands-free headset on): "Hey, David - how's it going? So, how are the new wheels? Really? Hmph. I never really much cared for the Tessterosa, I'm more of a Porsche fan myself, I guess.. My little 911 will .." *beep!* *beep!* *beep!* "Oh, damn - it's the bug filer icon on my desktop. Somebody just submitted something. Hang on, let me look.. Hmmm. Ah, it's just another silly bug report in the J. Random Peon folder.. He says here.. Haha! Heehee.. Hahahahahaha..! Oh, this is too rich! He says that his system scribbled all over his DOS partition after he ran `rogue' three times in a row, held his left foot in the air and then typed: sync;ls .;ps ax|grep -n dragon|awk -f '{print $1}' in another window! Haha!" David: "Wait. He says he typed sync *before* the ls?" Jordan: "Uh, yeah. heh.. Oh, it also says here: ``P.S. It also ate my little sister'''" David: "DAMN! I thought John and I FIXED that!" [sounds of scrabbling and frantic typing]. Jordan: "Whoa! Seriously? Spin control! Spin control!" [toss fitfully in sleep, eyeballs oscillating crazily, begin next dream sequence] I'm Randolph R. Bigbucks, owner of the popular ``Randy's Rodeo Restaurants'' restaurant chain, famous nationwide for the ``buckin' burger'' - a hamburger customers are only allowed to eat (or attempt to) while riding a mechanical bull set on "10". I'm talking on the phone to my lawyer and business partner, J. S. Livertaker. R: "So, Ah think that there pretty much outlines mah plan. We use this ``fray-bee-es-dee'' thing on a PC in the outhouse to run the milking machines and direct all 'em whirlin' bladey thangs in the slaughter room - steers go in one end, pressed and ready-to-cook hamburger patties come out the other! Totally automated! Saves a fortune! It's amazin'! What them Japanese can do these days, ah tell yuh." J: "But RB, this ``FreeBSD'' thing. Will it really work? We'll be running the whole operation from it!" R: "Well, there ain't no guarantees but I've been watchin' their fix database over this here Internet thingy and the graph shows that they're fixing bugs faster than they're comin' in, and the number has dropped way down in the last coupla weeks. Ah think this next release-o-theirs is gonna be purty sweet! Ah've been watchin' them boys' progress for awhile with this little query thang and it looks better than a lotta commercial yoo-nix companies!" J: "Well RB, you have me convinced - how much money should we send them, and in what sized sacks?" [fade to late afternoon sunlight - *yawn* My! What weird dreams! Well, time to start the new day!] :-) Jordan P.S. Even though the tone of this is joking, I'm dead serious about the need for all the features described herein. If this isn't send-pr/query-pr, then we need to write our own system or modify the GNATS tools appropriately!