Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Gerald Pfeifer]

Checking the GNATS database which currently shows 62 high priority
problems, there are some points I'd like to raise:

1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
   bug count has been significantly reduce.

2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
   not received any response for more than 6 months:

   Examples: 3931, 4650, 5971, 5515, 6545

3. We probably need some (further) volunteers who monitor GNATS more
   closely, ask submitters for further information/feedback and ping
   maintainers concerning problems in their areas.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry" pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[David S. Miller]

   From: Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
   Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 18:03:28 +0200 (CEST)

   1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
      bug count has been significantly reduce.
   
   2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
      not received any response for more than 6 months:
   
      Examples: 3931, 4650, 5971, 5515, 6545
   
   3. We probably need some (further) volunteers who monitor GNATS more
      closely, ask submitters for further information/feedback and ping
      maintainers concerning problems in their areas.

I agree on #1 and #2, but I'm not so sure #3 is going to help
all that much.

If maintainers aren't finding enough time to monitor GNATS in their
particular area, it is likely they are overloaded enough that some
volunteer pinging them they have stuff to look at won't get it done.

The volunteer who does the "ask for more information" bit will need
to be quite knowledgable.  But if you found such a person who isn't
already taxed with GCC things to do, it would be useful to have
them help in this area.

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Jakub Jelinek]

On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 09:12:05AM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
>    From: Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
>    Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 18:03:28 +0200 (CEST)
> 
>    1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
>       bug count has been significantly reduce.
>    
>    2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
>       not received any response for more than 6 months:
>    
>       Examples: 3931, 4650, 5971, 5515, 6545
>    
>    3. We probably need some (further) volunteers who monitor GNATS more
>       closely, ask submitters for further information/feedback and ping
>       maintainers concerning problems in their areas.
> 
> I agree on #1 and #2, but I'm not so sure #3 is going to help
> all that much.
> 
> If maintainers aren't finding enough time to monitor GNATS in their
> particular area, it is likely they are overloaded enough that some
> volunteer pinging them they have stuff to look at won't get it done.
> 
> The volunteer who does the "ask for more information" bit will need
> to be quite knowledgable.  But if you found such a person who isn't
> already taxed with GCC things to do, it would be useful to have
> them help in this area.

A lot of GNATS bugreports come with huge testcases. Trimming them into
testcases suitable for gcc testsuite (and at the same time into a size
in which they can be easily debugged) and where easily possible figuring
roughly what the bug area is would surely help IMNSHO.

	Jakub

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Nathan Sidwell]

Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> Checking the GNATS database which currently shows 62 high priority
> problems, there are some points I'd like to raise:
> 
> 1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
>    bug count has been significantly reduce.
I concur.

> 2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
>    not received any response for more than 6 months:
I'd think 3 or 4 months even.

nathan

-- 
Dr Nathan Sidwell   ::   http://www.codesourcery.com   ::   CodeSourcery LLC
          'But that's a lie.' - 'Yes it is. What's your point?'
nathan@codesourcery.com : http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~nathan/ : nathan@acm.org

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Mark Mitchell]

--On Monday, October 07, 2002 05:23:13 PM +0100 Nathan Sidwell 
<nathan@codesourcery.com> wrote:

> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>> Checking the GNATS database which currently shows 62 high priority
>> problems, there are some points I'd like to raise:
>>
>> 1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
>>    bug count has been significantly reduce.

> I concur.

Me too.

I will be making a concerted effort to fix the C++ bugs.

Please help as you are best able.

If you are laboring along on a branch, please take the time to work on
fixing a few bugs.  If we all fix three or four, we'll be done in
no time.  Your branch isn't going to be released until we are done with
this release, so your work is going to see the light of day much sooner
if you pitch in now.

-- 
Mark Mitchell                mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC            http://www.codesourcery.com

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Pop Sébastian]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 06:41:26AM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote:

> If we all fix three or four, we'll be done in no time.  

This sounds like a Stakhanovist ideal... I hope that the comparison stops here.

> Your branch isn't going to be released until we are done with
> this release, so your work is going to see the light of day much sooner
> if you pitch in now.
> 
I will try to help fixing some more bugs.  
(Mark, sorry for my last email...)

Sebastian.

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Mon, 7 Oct 2002, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
>> 2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
>>    not received any response for more than 6 months:
> I'd think 3 or 4 months even.

There were no responses to this, but 3 or 4 months would be fine with
me as well.

What should I add to our new section on "Procedures and Policies" at
the end of http://gcc.gnu.org/gnatswrite.html ? Mark?

Gerald

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Mark Mitchell]

--On Saturday, December 07, 2002 03:36:43 PM +0100 Gerald Pfeifer 
<pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Oct 2002, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
>>> 2. I suggest that we close PRs that have been in feedback state but
>>>    not received any response for more than 6 months:
>> I'd think 3 or 4 months even.
>
> There were no responses to this, but 3 or 4 months would be fine with
> me as well.
>
> What should I add to our new section on "Procedures and Policies" at
> the end of http://gcc.gnu.org/gnatswrite.html ? Mark?

I think 3 months is fine; please add that.

Thanks!

-- 
Mark Mitchell                mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC            http://www.codesourcery.com

PATCH for Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Mark Mitchell wrote:
>> What should I add to our new section on "Procedures and Policies" at
>> the end of http://gcc.gnu.org/gnatswrite.html ? Mark?
> I think 3 months is fine; please add that.

Thanks, I'll commit the following, once gcc.gnu.org is up and working
again.

Gerald

PS: I'll be offline starting tomorrow for most of the following two weeks;
would you mind committing this for me if the downtime takes longer, Janis?


*** gnatswrite.html.orig	Mon Dec  9 14:37:03 2002
--- gnatswrite.html	Mon Dec  9 09:27:51 2002
*************** version of GCC is released.</p>
*** 95,100 ****
--- 95,103 ----

  <h2>Procedures and Policies</h2>

+ <p><strong>Bugs in state "feedback"</strong> that have not received any
+ response for three months can be closed.</p>
+
  <p><strong>Bugs in category "bootstrap"</strong> that refer to older
  releases or snapshots/CVS versions should be put into state "feedback",
  asking the reporter whether she can still reproduce the problem and to

Re: Bug tracking / Release Quality Assurance

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

| Checking the GNATS database which currently shows 62 high priority
| problems, there are some points I'd like to raise:
| 
| 1. I believe we should not ship GCC 3.2.1 (or branch 3.3.) until this
|    bug count has been significantly reduce.

Agreed.

Seems like, somewhere at some point, our development model failed to
cope with only-bug-or-regression fixes and improving (in the broad
sense) the development branch: Balance interests in fixing bugs and
adding new functionality.  Clearly closing all branches won't
automatically make people fixing bugs, but somehow we need to improve
on the current situation.

Maybe more maintainers for some parts of the compilers?

[...]

| 3. We probably need some (further) volunteers who monitor GNATS more
|    closely, ask submitters for further information/feedback and ping
|    maintainers concerning problems in their areas.

Some maintainers have many things to sort out similtaneously so they
get quickly very busy...

-- Gaby