Re: Learning curves and such (was Re: pgFoundry)

> discuss it, and contribute to resolving it. More often than not, a
> web-based interface like Bugzilla leads to a single "bug master", who
> does most of this work by themselves. Besides the fact we don't have
> such a person, it would also mean that knowledge of bugs/patches and the
> discussion about resolving issues is distributed among a smaller pool of
> people.

I can only speak for RT but with RT you can easily avoid this. For
example you can set it up so that anything that would go to
patches(at)postgresql(dot)org would automatically create a ticket an alert all
people within the patches group.

Multiple people can be assigned to a ticket as a maintainer or just a
watcher.

You can even respond to specific messages within the thread instead of
just a top down (one email after the other).

> There is definitely room for improvement; submitted patches do
> occasionally fall through the cracks, for example. I would personally be
> interested in a "bug-tracking system" that is closer to a shared email
> archive.

That would be another nice part of RT. RT automatically deals with
attachments and although I wouldn't use it for this you could even use
it as a semi patch repository until the patch is actually approved for
submission.

> issues, searching through issues, etc. But the point is that the current
> system works well;

Well does it though? I am not saying it is bad, well yes I am ;). There
is no central place for me to point one of my developers and say -- Hey,
look at this patch... weren't we working on something like this? Let's
help them out.

I have to have the dig through the mail archives which is fairly counter
productive. It would be much better to be able to say, hey... look at
patch #42345. What do you think?

> I'm not sure which existing systems fit this model (suggestions are
> welcome) -- email needs to be the primary interface, not an afterthought
> (as is often the case). Perhaps RT would work, I'm not sure.

RT supports complete email integration. Most of the interaction I do
with it is actually through email not through the web interface. It also
has the ability to have a knowledge base dropped right on top of it.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> -Neil
>
> [1] Hat-tip to Andrew Morton's keynote at LCA, which made this point
> effectively.
>
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