Bug tracker vs Forum

[adrian.tarau]

First of all, I would like to express my thanks to Jack and his team, they are doing a terrific job for everybody.

I'm not a JavaScript developer, but it is pretty closed to Java ;) and am catching up using all the documentation available(docs, form + the source code) + trial and error :D

I think the idea of using a forum as a bug tracker is not very good(or features). You should use a bug tracking software and from my experience, I can recommend you Redmine ( www.redmine.org ). It is still young but the community grew around the project, it is well maintained and many features are added with every version. The interface is intuitive and the current features can provide a better bug/feature tracking that a forum.

Thanks.

[vmorale4]

I completely agree with you, for example currently there are 29 pages just in the Ext 2.0 Missing and Incorrect category, and at times it becomes very hard to know if a bug has already been reported, or even know if a particular issue has been looked at...

For this particular thread there is a post (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?p=67727#post67727) that is supposed to be updated when a bug has been fixed, or verified, but the last time it was updated was on 01-14-2008 covering thru post #140 (There are 284 posts now...) . I can only imagine that it is equally burdensome to the Ext Team and to Ext end users to keep up.

I have never heard about Redmine, but when I was researching about this topic I really liked TRAC (http://trac.edgewall.org/) which is open source also. The cool thing about Trac is the abilty to "allows hyperlinking information between a computer bug database, revision control and wiki content" [Wikipedia]. I also think that making it seamless to navigate between bugs, wikis and API documentation would help all the folks that are starting using Ext..

[adrian.tarau]

Trac is good too... I used both but Redmine (at least from v0.6) seems to be better, at least in my opinion.

[adrian.tarau]

Redmine has all those features and version 0.7 (http://www.redmine.org/versions/show/1) brings more improvements.

See http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Features

[jack.slocum]

We only use the forum as the discussion front end for getting bugs into our internal bug tracker. Since 80%+ of posts in there are either help questions, duplicates and just not a good understanding of javascript/css, it is needed to keep the bug tracker from being useless.

[dandvd]

Trac is good too...

I contribute to Pidgin and have used Trac there (http://developer.pidgin.im/query?reporter=dandv). Compare with Bugzilla used at ActiveState (http://bugs.activestate.com/buglist.cgi?emailreporter1=1&emaillongdesc1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=ddascalescu%40gmail.com) or Mozilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?emailreporter1=1&emaillongdesc1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=ddascalescu%40gmail.com). Sorry, but Trac is very rudimentary.

Other than that, I completely agree that a bug tracking system is much better suited for tracking bugs than a forum. If a hosted solution is OK, I've heard good things about FogBUGZ (http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/).http://automaticallyyours.com/icons/smiley4.gif

[adrian.tarau]

Hi Jack,

Good point, especially with newbies like me :)

But have a look at this milestone, 0.7 : http://www.redmine.org/versions/show/1
Look how nice you can see the status of the project, what bug was fixed/will be fixed in the next release, what features, etc. I know you can see the current status in your bugtracking software but we don't :)

I don't know what software do you use internally, but if it offers something similar it will be very valuable. At least provide it read-only(anonymous user for everybody, Redmine has something like that where you can view everything - by default, but you can play with the security), it is better that the forum thread with the bug fixes.

I think it can worth a try and if it doesn't work you can drop it. You can enforce strict rules(I know, some will not comply or they will do something "bad" by mistake) like ban the person(I know, you are not the NYPD to track the users, but it was the first idea that came into my mind :) ) or no bug is filled until the diagnostic "possible bug" is decided in the forum. Regarding the features, the risk to be polluted is lower, usually everybody post there his needs and if the request makes sense for you or for a large group, you can implement it.

Best regards and keep up the good work... :)

PS. Jack, don't understand me wrong, I'm just trying to help with a suggestion, I'm not saying the current solution is not working, it works fine but I think a public bug/feature tracking is better - with the risk to became polluted. I'm pretty sure there will some guys out there(with some good understanding of JavaScript/CSS which can help to filter out most of the wrong posts).

[adrian.tarau]

I contribute to Pidgin and have used Trac there (http://developer.pidgin.im/query?reporter=dandv). Compare with Bugzilla used at ActiveState (http://bugs.activestate.com/buglist.cgi?emailreporter1=1&emaillongdesc1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=ddascalescu%40gmail.com) or Mozilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?emailreporter1=1&emaillongdesc1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=ddascalescu%40gmail.com). Sorry, but Trac is very rudimentary.

Other than that, I completely agree that a bug tracking system is much better suited for tracking bugs than a forum.http://automaticallyyours.com/icons/smiley.bmp

It's not the best but it does the job pretty well. Especially if you love Perl(I think is made in Perl) :)

[buzz]

Maybe a readonly version of the bug tracker would be a suitable compromise.
While the idea is good its seems like the original poster's intent was to shamelessly plug redmine which I am sure he is working for.

[adrian.tarau]

buzz,

My intention was to help ExtJS comunity, not to promote Redmine.

As you can see I'm not a developer of Redmine : http://www.redmine.org/projects/show/redmine

Redmine seems a good choice, I'm use it and it works well, but I'm fine with any good bug tracking. ExtJS Team could even try to get a free license for Atlassian JIRA : http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/ . Based on the fact that ExtJS is open source and has a strong community they could give you a license for free.Check http://www.atlassian.com/software/views/opensource-license-request.jsp

[vmorale4]

Maybe a readonly version of the bug tracker would be a suitable compromise.
While the idea is good its seems like the original poster's intent was to shamelessly plug redmine which I am sure he is working for.

I agree, proper communication is a must for any project, and read-only access would be a huge step forward.

It would reassure Ext Users that they are are not talking to a wall (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?p=149845#post149845), be aware of what are current issues, what things have already been resolved (and perhaps in which revision), etc...

As I mentioned before (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?p=148403#post148403) with the Forum at times it becomes very hard to know if a bug has already been reported, or even know if a particular issue has been looked at.

[OutpostMM]

While there's nothing wrong with allowing people read-only access to a bug tracker, I think that replacing the bug forum with a public bug tracker would be a mistake. As Jack pointed out, many people making programming errors would jump to the conclusion that their failure is caused by a bug in Ext and would post it as such. Write access to any bug tracking system should be limited to the core developers (as it is now), providing public read-only access would only be good so that people could search for an existing bug before posting (not that most people actually would). I was about ready to yell "bug" in this (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31128) topic after spending a week of simplifying my code down until I finally found the cause, allowing the unwashed masses to submit their own bugs would be a huge headache.

[vmorale4]

While there's nothing wrong with allowing people read-only access to a bug tracker, I think that replacing the bug forum with a public bug tracker would be a mistake. As Jack pointed out, many people making programming errors would jump to the conclusion that their failure is caused by a bug in Ext and would post it as such. Write access to any bug tracking system should be limited to the core developers (as it is now), providing public read-only access would only be good so that people could search for an existing bug before posting (not that most people actually would). I was about ready to yell "bug" in this (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31128) topic after spending a week of simplifying my code down until I finally found the cause, allowing the unwashed masses to submit their own bugs would be a huge headache.

I'm not advocating either for a write-access bug tracker. I actually like the idea of having the forum as first filter for the "unwashed masses" as you pointed out. The problem is that in the current setup it is difficult to keep track of which items "passed" the filter, and what is their current status.

So in reality, it is not "Bug Tracker OR Forum" but "Read-only Bug tracker AND Forum"

[adrian.tarau]

A read-only list of bugs will be a step forward. We can use the forum to raise problems/questions, but if your problem will be accepted as a bug, you will be able to see the status any time.

I have to agree, JavaScript projects are a little bit difficult, especially complex JavaScript libraries like ExtJS. The regular user could jump and raise a problem not because he likes to report bugs, it's because he thinks there is a problem with ExtJS (especially when you use IE :) ).

One more thing : anybody(any registered user) should be able to add comments and even to be able to add feature requests(if the bug tracking software allows different user rights for bugs and features). I don't think there is any danger in letting the users to create feature requests.

[OutpostMM]

The regular user could jump and raise a problem not because he likes to report bugs, it's because he thinks there is a problem with ExtJS
That happens with any language or framework, not just Javascript or Ext. On another forum I see several questions from programmers with no experience asserting things like there is a bug with PHP's fopen function, instead of acknowledging the possibility that they just might not know what they're doing. There is a tendency for new programmers to take the route of "copy and paste, see error, report 'bug'" instead of trying to think about what they're doing.

[adrian.tarau]

I agree, it can happens with any language but I think with JavaScript it is easier to jump to a wrong conclusion. You can debug with FireBug(I'm not sure if there is something for IE???) but you cannot compare the current JavaScript debuggers with a Java IDE Debugger(unfortunately)

Anyway, read-only bug tracking will be great(with comments???)

Read/write feature tracking??

[OutpostMM]

For IE there is DebugBar, and Opera has the Opera Developer Tools.

[adrian.tarau]

I've looked at DebugBar features : http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/Doc/HomePage and it doesn't say anything about debugging."Execute javascript code in the currently loaded page" maybe is closed enough to debugging.

Anyway, I will try it. I have a JavaScript error in IE(6&7), something like "Invalid property name"(works in FireFox without any warning) and the line number is totally wrong.

Thanks.

[dandvd]

I think this bug system is undoubtedly superior:

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Halfway-in-the-Digital-Age.aspx
http://automaticallyyours.com/icons/smiley4.gif

[seymores]

IMHO having a public bug tracker is useful in these cases:

1. If I think I have a bug, I go try search the bug tracker for it.

2. If it's a reported bug, then great -- what's the comment from the commiter, who is in charge and when it's expected to be closed?

3. If it's not in bug tracker, I submit bug report

4. Commiter review my bug report and a) Decide it's a real bug and update accordingly, b) found it's a duplicate, mark as duplicate, maybe make a little comment and move on

5. Others came try to report/search for similar bug, found the existing bug report and move on.

Frankly, there shouldn't be any issue running a public bug tracker for ExtJs -- it should be there already in the first place! Compare this to the forum with ppl searching/posting for bug reports!

Anyway, just IMHO.

Cheers.

[Animal]

It would be great to expose a read-only bug tracker. Especially a really cool Ext-based one.

Yet another reference implementation, and itself an advert for what can be done with Ext.

I don't know what the developers use internally, I'm sure they must use something.

[mystix]

It would be great to expose a read-only bug tracker. Especially a really cool Ext-based one.

Yet another reference implementation, and itself an advert for what can be done with Ext.

I don't know what the developers use internally, I'm sure they must use something.

last i heard, it's Fogbugz (www.fogbugz.com).
not on it though -- it's only available to core devs.

till now, it's been plain old Stickies (http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/) and the bugs forums for me. :((