On 13/03/10 22:55, Heiko Baums wrote:
Am Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:58:24 +0100
schrieb Pierre Schmitz<pierre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Yes, there are sometimes situations where I wanted to add a more or
less important comment to a bug reports but it was just closed.
In the other hand I see the problems of never ending discussions and
flame wars.
In other bug trackers I haven't seen never ending discussions and flame
wars on closed bugs, yet. Sometimes long discussions happen on open
bugs, but usually in a factual manner, and usually there's a reason for
this, because it's a controversial issue. If a comment is written on a
closed bug it's just to give some more details, because the fix is not
quite sufficient or could be made still better or the like.
And in cases in which it's possible to reopen a bug directly without
sending a request, I also haven't seen exploitations. Usually the bug is
reopened once or twice to give another argument or another aspect. But
then it's alright.
You obviously do not visit the glibc tracker. Then again, perhaps there
is a reason for such things in that particular project... And I have
seen similar things on other distros trackers where reopens by users are
allowed (yes, including Gentoo), although they obviously are not the
usual. Then again, most bugs do not get re-open requests in Arch.
How many bug reports are actually invalid because of an imperfect
knowledge or (search) laziness of the reporter? How many bug reports
are of the type Aaron Griffin has mentioned before (Feature request,
closed as "won't implement", reopend with "but it's a good feature",
denied with "we won't implement this, wait for upstream", reopened,
denied)? Are there really so many of them? I have my doubts. Or is this
more the developer's fear that this could happen?
Yes, it occurs and not infrequently. The question should be does it
occur more often than that bugs are closed to early? I.e. which
solution would cause less total annoyance. Note that one option focuses
the annoyance on a small number of devs, while the other spreads it out
across many users.
And as I've written in other e-mails, don't see only your developer's
point of view. See also the user's and reporter's point of view and how
a certain bug handling (early closings, forcing reopening requests
(begging), etc.) is or at least can be received by the user/reporter.
We are also users... According to flyspray, I have opened 126 bugs and
I do not recall ever requesting or reopening one after it was closed.
I do not see all reopen requests, but the need to "beg" seems
overstated... I do know that it is much, much easier to get a bug
reopened if the request is clear and well justified. A large portion of
reopen requests provide no information to properly judge their merit in
which case they are more likely denied.
Allan
