[Numpy-discussion] Improving bug triage in trac ?

[Robert Kern]

David Cournapeau wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
>     I am personnally a bit annoyed by the way trac handle bug reports, 
> and would like to know if there is space for improvement. I do not know 
> much about bug tracking systems, so maybe I just don't know how to use 
> it, though. The main thing I dislike is the status of tickets and 
> reports. In particular:
>     - I don't know how other feel, but I am rather confused by the meta 
> data of a ticket, and do not find them really useful from a developer 
> point of view. It would be quite helpful to have information whether the 
> bug is confirmed or not, another one which says wether a patch is 
> available or not. This would make bug triage much easier, IMHO. This 
> should be possible, since I have seen some trac installation with such 
> features (wordpad trac, for example).

Did you mean "WordPress Trac"? (luckily, the first Google hit for "wordpad trac"
happens to be the WordPress Trac)

They seem to do this with a standard lexicon of keywords and custom queries.

  http://codex.wordpress.org/Reporting_Bugs#Trac_Keywords

>     - This one maybe a bit more difficult to implement I guess (I don't 
> know anything about trac internals): I find the general view of bugs for 
> a given repository really helpful in launchpad, in perticular, you can 
> easily view the percentage of bugs wrt their status (eg 30 % bugs 
> unconfirmed, etc...); see for example https://bugs.launchpad.net/+about. 
> This gives a pretty good idea of what needs to be done for a particular 
> release.
>     How do other people feel about those suggestions ?

We can certainly add custom fields or start using keywords like WordPress. We
can't change the status field (new, assigned, closed, reopened), though. That
workflow is hardcoded in Trac 0.10, which we are currently using. Getting the
summary (30% unconfirmed) may be a bit more difficult. For more reading:

  http://scipy.org/scipy/scipy/wiki/TracReports
  http://scipy.org/scipy/scipy/wiki/TracQuery

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco