Re: Bug database for diffutils

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry wrote:
> I have a mailbox of several hundred pending reports :(.
> If there were more people actively working on the project, then it might
> be a different story, but in fact, I am the only one, and dealing with
> the bugdb gains me nothing.

There are counter-arguments:

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Claim 1: The use of a bug-tracker is a time-efficient way to get more bugs
         fixed in the same time.

It sounds paradoxical, but here's the calculation: Say, you need
  - 10 seconds to move a bug report to your TODO folder,
  - 5 minutes to fill out the forms of a bug tracker,
  - 6 hours to fix a bug, on average.
Then, someone else can take a bug description from the bug tracker, find a
fix, and send it to you. You will still need, say, 2 hours to integrate this
fix. But this means that you have invested 5 minutes to save yourself 4 hours
of work. OK, you also have spent the 5 minutes for many other bugs. Small
computation:  4 hours / 5 minutes = 48. So, if you put into the bug tracker
47 bugs, and only for one of them you get a fix from someone else, you still
have a return on investment.

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Claim 2: A bug-tracker helps to get the most severe bugs fixed.

At work, every few months I go over the bugs assigned to me, and pick those
to fix according to their severity. The bug tracker has a simple way to
sort according to the severity. The mailer does not have such sorting
facilities. In many mailers, you cannot even assign user-defined attributes
(like "important", "urgent", etc.) at all.
Before I used a bug tracker, the decision which bugs to fix was pretty
random:
  - Often, it was related to the timing of the bug reports: When 3 reports
    came in within a short time, I spent time on the first one and left the
    two others for later.
  - Or, often I fixed a bug just because it disturbed me the most. But in
    a bug tracker, your users can say which bug _they_ consider most severe.

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Claim 3: A bug-tracker helps to attract co-maintainers.

How do people come to join a project? Sometimes:
First, they submit bug reports.
Second, they submit patches for bug reports (both their own and others).
Third, they understand the code well and become co-workers.

So, by showing the bug database to other people, you could more effectively
attract co-workers.

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Bruno