[Bug other/23281] New: Miscategorization of quality-of-implementation reports

[Bug other/23281] New: Miscategorization of quality-of-implementation reports

[igodard at pacbell dot net]

This DR reflects bug report #23263 (q.v.) but addresses a larger issue. That
report has been categorized as an "enhancement request". 

Should this and other reports about diagnostic quality be treated as
"enhancement requests"? I suppose tht it depends on what you consider
"correctness". If correctness means "conforming to standard", then any
diagnostic will do, including "something wrong found somewhere in program".
Personally I use a different standard of "correct", which includes "usable", and
so addresses issues like compilation time measured in days as well as quality of
diagnostic.

I understand that the gcc implementation community has a notion of "QOI"
(quality of implementation) which reflects much of what I call "usable". But I
would distinguish a "defect of QOI" from an "enhancement request"; the latter
being something nice to have, but the former impacting real usage.

I put this particular DR (#23262) in the "defect of QOI" category. Even if you
do not, you probably can select a non-empty set of DRs that are truly "defects"
and not mere "enhancement requests. 

Consequently I'm filing this DR against the gcc DR reporting machinery itself,
rather than against the compiler in particular. There needs to be categories for
QOI defects of varying severity; either that, or complaints about diagnostics
and other QOI ussues should not by policy be filed as "enhancement requests",
and forgotten.

-- 
           Summary: Miscategorization of quality-of-implementation reports
           Product: gcc
           Version: unknown
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: other
        AssignedTo: unassigned at gcc dot gnu dot org
        ReportedBy: igodard at pacbell dot net
                CC: gcc-bugs at gcc dot gnu dot org


http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23281

[Bug other/23281] Miscategorization of quality-of-implementation reports

[pinskia at gcc dot gnu dot org]

------- Additional Comments From pinskia at gcc dot gnu dot org  2005-08-08 02:48 -------
One thing is that diagnostic reports which does not report an invalid error message is an enhancement.
One which wants to add more to an diagnostic is an enhancement.
A bug for a missed optimization is an enhancement.

A diagnostic which is just plainly invalid is either minor or nornal depending on if it is a rejects valid or 
just printing out an error message that does not correspond to the source.

----
and now to PR 23263

In PR 23263, the error message is correct as the template class is undefined.


Hopefully this helps you understand why I called PR 23263, an enhancement.

-- 
           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |INVALID


http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23281

[Bug other/23281] Miscategorization of quality-of-implementation reports

[dberlin at gcc dot gnu dot org]

------- Additional Comments From dberlin at gcc dot gnu dot org  2005-08-08 03:00 -------
(In reply to comment #0)
> 
> Consequently I'm filing this DR against the gcc DR reporting machinery itself,
> rather than against the compiler in particular. There needs to be categories for
> QOI defects of varying severity;

No.
Speaking as the bugzilla person, i'm not adding categories for QOI issues,
because almost everything that isn't a strict bug is a QOI issue already.
Diagnostic issues should be filed against the approriate frontend component, or
middle-end/backend (in a few cases).

I am also not going to add 57 different severities, because it wouldn't do
anything for people trying to fix bugs.  Read the details of what the severities
show (click the linked word severity), and you will see that most diagnostic
issues do indeed fall under enhancement.

People subjectively view the severity of an issue differently, which is why we
have people go through and evaluate it using the objective criteria in the
management page.

> either that, or complaints about diagnostics
> and other QOI ussues should not by policy be filed as "enhancement requests",
> and forgotten.

If they are forgotten, it is not because they are marked enhancement requests as
opposed to minor or normal.
You are mixing up severity and priority.
Severity is basically an objective measure.
Priority is a subjective measure, and theoretically used by developers to
prioritize which bugs to work on.
.

-- 


http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23281