Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 01:23:09 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh> To: hackers Subject: query-pr. please! Message-ID: <199502180923.BAA10380@freefall.cdrom.com>
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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 <dir> and ``--mychanges-are-in <dir>'' 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!
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