[cmake-developers] [CMake] CMake bug tracker discussion

Pau Garcia i Quiles pgquiles at elpauer.org
Thu Dec 9 17:30:12 EST 2010


On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 11:06 PM, David Cole <david.cole at kitware.com> wrote:
> Hello CMake users and devs,
>
> (And now for something completely different...)
>
> Controversial questions:
>
> - Should we eliminate the bug tracker entirely and just do all
> discussion and patches on the mailing list? (Why have two sources of
> information...?)
>
> - Or, alternatively, should we eliminate the bulk of mailing list
> traffic, and insist on issues in the bug tracker being the main
> conversational forum for the whole community?
>
> I'd like to have this discussion here publicly, to try to get a good
> sense of varous community members attitudes and feelings.
>
>
> I'll start the ball rolling by saying that, personally, I like the bug
> tracker. I find it much easier to keep a list of issues organized and
> accessible than I can with email filters and folders. But I still see
> a need for both tools.
>
> What do you say?

Interestingly, a very related thread was recently started by a former
KDE developer who is now a Mozilla developer:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.general/62171

My opinion: I like having both a mailing list and a bug tracker.

However, I feel not enough attention is paid to the bug tracker. For
instance, I requested a feature and provided a patch almost two years
ago and I've heard nothing:

http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=8707

I guess it's an issue of not enough manpower.

Given that Kitware does not make money directly from CMake, I
understand you cannot invest in having people dedicated exclusively to
this.

Nokia is suffering a similar problem with Qt (it's just too big for
them to maintain everything on every platform they support). Their
(proposed) solution? "Outsource" some things to the community, i. e.
let people not from Nokia work on stuff they want and have a loose
acceptance policy.

Maybe you could start by having some people from outside of Kitware
(apart from Alex ;-) ) help with triaging bugs and commit patches and
not-too-complex features.

Also, having a public and clear roadmap and release dates is
appreciated. I think 2.8.4 is the first release I actually know what
is being worked on and when it is going to be released. I would like
to know what the long-term vision and plans are: what platforms and
languages would you would like to support, what fundamental changes
you plan to make, what things you will never accept, what would you
like to see but do not have/cannot justify the time/resources to do
and would like the community to help you with, etc

Oh, and one more request for the bugtracker, related to what I just
said: a vote system, so that people can vote for features/bugfixes/etc
they feel important. You may (or may not) be surprised to discover
something is considered very important by a lot of people.

-- 
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)



More information about the cmake-developers mailing list