* The TODO list and planning a release schedule
@ 2004-06-17 9:24 Chad Walstrom
2004-06-17 16:48 ` CVS Branching and Merging Chad Walstrom
2004-06-20 16:43 ` The TODO list and planning a release schedule Mel Hatzis
0 siblings, 2 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Chad Walstrom @ 2004-06-17 9:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: help-gnats
[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 10754 bytes --]
I figured I'd throw this out for discussion to see what people feel are
priorities for the GNATS software and what type of release schedule we
should try to hold to. The following list is the text output of the XML
.todo file that has been checked into CVS.
I'm fishing for comments here, so please let us know what your
impressions are. I've copied in almost all of the old TODO list into
the 'Unassigned' list item. These are trivial to reparent to different
releases. If a task isn't "assigned" to someone, it's because this is
still a work in progress or because no one has mentioned interest in it.
Also, our GNATS database, although recovered from the old fencepost
backups, has not been reinstalled or reinstated. Consider every release
a bugfix release, although notable ones may show up on this list. I'm
awaiting a fencepost account, and we have requested that the GNATS
database be installed and restored to its former glory from the GNU
sysadmin's. Adam or I will keep you all posted.
A '-' in front of a list item indicates it's finished.
As far as a timeline, I would like to start preparing a 4.1 pre-release
ASAP. There have been some CVS updates since the original 4.0 release,
and it's a good time mark the codebase before branching off for the big
changes in 4.2 and 5.0.
GNATS General TODO List
1.Release 4.1: Code cleanups, bug fixes, documentation updates
Added: Fri Jun 11 10:36:54 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
- 1.Prepend $(DESTDIR) to Makefile.in installation targets (Chad)
Added: Fri Jun 11 11:08:38 2004 Completed: completed on Fri Jun 11 14:07:23 2004
Duration: 2h 58m elapsed Priority: veryhigh
(Committed this to CVS two days ago.)
2.Add missing manpages -- one manpage for each application
Added: Fri Jun 11 11:11:57 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
3.Kill install-sid script and update documentation
Added: Fri Jun 11 11:09:17 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
4.Update Documentation: Set developer's policy.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:45:45 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
2.Release 4.2: New Features
Added: Fri Jun 11 10:37:02 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Mail handling enhancements
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:48:24 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Mail-based manipulation of GNATS database (Mel)
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:11 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
2.Trigger-based mail format replies (Mel)
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:28 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
3.Enable To: address@bogus.example.com syntax to queue-pr
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:40 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
2.MIME Handling
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:50:49 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Detach files appropriately for GNATS DB format
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:51:48 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
2.Convert HTML to TXT?
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:51:15 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
3.Release 5.0: New Features, Major Changes to DB Layer, RDBMS
Added: Fri Jun 11 10:37:07 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Database Enhancements
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:53:57 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
1.DB Abstraction Layer (Mel)
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:52:27 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
2.Oracle RDBMS Backend
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:52:39 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
2.Mail handling enhancements
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:10 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Maintain mbox archive of all emails
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:27 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
2.Fake Audit trail entries as emails and append to mbox archive
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:41 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
3.Continue to use existing PR datafile for logging events, keywords, and metadata
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:58 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
3.Account enhancements
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:56:29 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.PAM Authentication (Pankaj)
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:56:45 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
(Pankaj expressed interest in this on 2004-06-14)
4.Unassigned
Added: Fri Jun 11 13:50:51 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
1.Add squirrels, to make pst happy.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:32 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: high
2.Add conditional formats
Added: Fri Jun 11 13:56:21 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
3.Add script hooks, probably for edit formats and such. Need to think about how to
integrate in changes to the PR done by the script
Added: Fri Jun 11 13:57:38 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
(after all, that's really the whole point)
4.Allow fields to not exist; add a "field-always-present" option to the field description
Added: Fri Jun 11 13:58:17 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
5.Add virtual fields.
Added: Fri Jun 11 13:59:28 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
(The output format can use the existing format mechanism. This would necessitate having a
"no-display" field flag, so that some fields don't show up in a "full" query (adding all
the fields to full" is a rather obnoxious requirement). There should also be a "raw"
query that dumps all the real fields as raw contents, for editing purposes (and perhaps
for other things).)
6.Revise access control mechanisms.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:39:12 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
7.Should PRs have a ">Database-Name:" header? Probably, and probably immutable. Can be
used when editing a PR, or submitting an initial one.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:39:27 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
8.Append-only fields. Need to revise access control first.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:40:05 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
9.Document functions. Many of them are undocumented (even newly-added ones, shame).
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:41:10 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
10.See how much farther we can go with removing knowledge of particular fields from the
gnats code.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:03 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
11.Make it possible to include adm field contents in the configuration file, instead of
always using an external config file.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:59 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
12.The database state is not clean. There should be a struct that describes the current
database, and is passed around as needed.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:43:22 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
13.The client state is not clean. The API is horrid; clients should not know or care if
they're communicating via the network or locally. The original solution was to just
allow network access, but that's not really fixing the problem. (We'll know we're there
when gnatsd can act as a relay.)
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:43:55 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
14.The client connection to the server should also be encapsulated in a struct as well. That
is, something to describe the client (its hostname, username, password, access level).
Could eventually allow for a single server process that handles multiple connections.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:44:32 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: medium
15.Change edit-pr to include the "Changed-Why:" header in the initial PR template instead of
a separate prompt. Maybe.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:24:46 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: low
16.Should all the fields listed in the input section be required? Configurable? How about
rejecting initial erroneous PRs (PRs with bad fields) instead of fixing them up? It sucks
that pr-edit --submit < /dev/null could quite presumably create a valid PR.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:25:50 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: low
17.The initial PR filing stuff is way too complicated. In particular, the various field
checks should be configured in dbconfig. That would let us remove more builtin fields.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:38:18 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: low
18.Decide if the "exec gnatsd locally" option is a security hole. (Probably.) Make it #if
TESTING only?
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:38:30 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: low
19.Come up with a better name for the lexer source file.
Added: Fri Jun 11 14:41:35 2004 Completed: incomplete
Duration: incomplete Priority: low
--
Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/
assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
[-- Attachment #1.2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 140 bytes --]
_______________________________________________
Help-gnats mailing list
Help-gnats@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnats
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread* CVS Branching and Merging 2004-06-17 9:24 The TODO list and planning a release schedule Chad Walstrom @ 2004-06-17 16:48 ` Chad Walstrom 2004-06-20 16:43 ` The TODO list and planning a release schedule Mel Hatzis 1 sibling, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread From: Chad Walstrom @ 2004-06-17 16:48 UTC (permalink / raw) To: help-gnats [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1590 bytes --] Chad Walstrom wrote: > As far as a timeline, I would like to start preparing a 4.1 > pre-release ASAP. There have been some CVS updates since the original > 4.0 release, and it's a good time mark the codebase before branching > off for the big changes in 4.2 and 5.0. Let me rephrase that. We should probably branch releases and leave the trunk as the development branch. In which case, we tag the trunk for the 4.1 release as release_4_1, then create the maintenance branch as release_4_1_branch. Patch releases to the 4.1 series would then be tagged from that branch: release_4_1_1, etc. We don't need to get carried away with judicious branching, but if you feel comfortable using a branch to work on feature enhancements, please feel free to do so. Let's leave the trunk for merging. For example, Mel is planning big changes, so perhaps he branches off the trunk as {featurename|author}_{revision-branching-from}_dev And, when you're ready to merge to the trunk, merge from the trunk to get the updates and tag (with '_merge') after conflicts are resolved. Then whoever is in charge of merging to the trunk will pull from that tag. Once merged, we can tag the target trunk/branch with a "_merged" tag. Ideas? Overkill? I know CVS operations to savannah are a bit slow, but it's workable. What do you all think of judicious tagging? i.e. Tagging the merge-points of bug fixes or feature additions? -- Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/ assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */ [-- Attachment #1.2: Digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 140 bytes --] _______________________________________________ Help-gnats mailing list Help-gnats@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnats ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: The TODO list and planning a release schedule 2004-06-17 9:24 The TODO list and planning a release schedule Chad Walstrom 2004-06-17 16:48 ` CVS Branching and Merging Chad Walstrom @ 2004-06-20 16:43 ` Mel Hatzis 2004-06-20 17:06 ` Chad Walstrom 1 sibling, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread From: Mel Hatzis @ 2004-06-20 16:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Chad Walstrom; +Cc: help-gnats Hi Chad, thanks for putting this together...it's a great starting point for where we're going next. I have more comments below, but before we delve into them, let me first say thanks for stepping up and taking on the role of GNATS maintainer. On 06/15/2004 12:28 PM, Chad Walstrom submitted: > I figured I'd throw this out for discussion to see what people feel are > priorities for the GNATS software and what type of release schedule we > should try to hold to. The following list is the text output of the XML > .todo file that has been checked into CVS. > > I'm fishing for comments here, so please let us know what your > impressions are. I've copied in almost all of the old TODO list into > the 'Unassigned' list item. These are trivial to reparent to different > releases. If a task isn't "assigned" to someone, it's because this is > still a work in progress or because no one has mentioned interest in it. > > Also, our GNATS database, although recovered from the old fencepost > backups, has not been reinstalled or reinstated. Consider every release > a bugfix release, although notable ones may show up on this list. I'm > awaiting a fencepost account, and we have requested that the GNATS > database be installed and restored to its former glory from the GNU > sysadmin's. Adam or I will keep you all posted. Cool. > > A '-' in front of a list item indicates it's finished. > > As far as a timeline, I would like to start preparing a 4.1 pre-release > ASAP. There have been some CVS updates since the original 4.0 release, > and it's a good time mark the codebase before branching off for the big > changes in 4.2 and 5.0. > > GNATS General TODO List > 1.Release 4.1: Code cleanups, bug fixes, documentation updates > Added: Fri Jun 11 10:36:54 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > - 1.Prepend $(DESTDIR) to Makefile.in installation targets (Chad) > Added: Fri Jun 11 11:08:38 2004 Completed: completed on Fri Jun 11 14:07:23 2004 > Duration: 2h 58m elapsed Priority: veryhigh While we're here, if you try building from a directory other than the top-level source directory, say by creating $topdir/objdir and running ../configure from the objdir directory, the --with-submitter and --with-organization configure flags end up getting ignored. I've got a fix for this...which basically involves removing all references to the DEFAULT_ORGANIZATION and SUBMITTER macros from the $topdir/gnats build files - thereby preventing the config-send-pr target from screwing things up for send-pr. I've also got a patch for the doc/Makefile.in so that no attempt is made to build the info targets if the 'makeinfo' program cannot be found. Finally, it'd be really cool if we could add 'make test' to the build/install process. The real difficulty in achieving this, IMO, is that there's no way to run gnatsd without first installing it ...since it looks for the databases file. Perhaps adding a command line switch to gnatsd for specifying the path to the databases file would work around this limitation. I've put together a regression test suite which I may be able to work into the build process. Unfortunately, it uses a small perl component for setting up the database which will need to be reworked as a shell script. > > (Committed this to CVS two days ago.) > 2.Add missing manpages -- one manpage for each application > Added: Fri Jun 11 11:11:57 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > 3.Kill install-sid script and update documentation > Added: Fri Jun 11 11:09:17 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 4.Update Documentation: Set developer's policy. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:45:45 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium All the above are good. I need to dig around...I have many bug fixes to provide. Since they've been made in the context of the gnats-dbi project I've been working on, it's going to be a little bit of a hassle finding them all and putting patches together. > > 2.Release 4.2: New Features > Added: Fri Jun 11 10:37:02 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Mail handling enhancements > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:48:24 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Mail-based manipulation of GNATS database (Mel) > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:11 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 2.Trigger-based mail format replies (Mel) > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:28 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 3.Enable To: address@bogus.example.com syntax to queue-pr > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:49:40 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium I'm not clear on #3...can you elaborate. Also, I've recently implemented something else you might find valuable...it's a filter which you can apply to a mail-format for limiting the list of recipients. This is useful in the context of a view into the PR database...which is possible with the Oracle backend. e.g. You might allow a certain class of user to create PRs but wish to prevent that class of user from receiving particular GNATS mail notifications. The feature is also useful in preventing mail loops. The dbconfig syntax (which is entirely optional) is as follows: mail-filter "foo" { # don't allow email to fred deny "^fred.*" # allow foo internal email addresses allow "[[:alnum:]._-]\+(@foo\.com)\?$" # all other email addresses are disallowed policy deny } mail-format "initial-response-to-submitter" { trigger on-create "Category!=\"sw-tools\"" ...other mail-format elements apply-filter "foo" ...other mail-format elements } The above example would restrict the initial-response-to-submitter notification so that it would only go to users with a foo email address (or a non-qualified/internal address). > > 2.MIME Handling > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:50:49 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Detach files appropriately for GNATS DB format > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:51:48 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > 2.Convert HTML to TXT? > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:51:15 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium I like these...I started scoping this using the MIME::Parser and MIME::Decoder perl modules but didn't get very far. MIME handling could also support an attachment feature which I would love to see added to the project. > > 3.Release 5.0: New Features, Major Changes to DB Layer, RDBMS > Added: Fri Jun 11 10:37:07 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Database Enhancements > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:53:57 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > 1.DB Abstraction Layer (Mel) > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:52:27 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > 2.Oracle RDBMS Backend > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:52:39 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high You might want to add PostgreSQL as a 3rd item. I've started putting this together. The development for the Oracle backend is pretty much done...we've been using it at Juniper for about a year and no additional effort has been required. This will largely be a matter of review and integration. A 4th item for Release 5.0 features might be support for transactions. After doing away with the need for a global gnats lock (using the Oracle backend), it has become an interesting challenge to see how far one can go in removing the need for a user to take out a PR lock. In organizations with large user bases and large numbers of PRs, the current method of having an edit client lock the PR is sub-optimal. > > 2.Mail handling enhancements > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:10 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Maintain mbox archive of all emails > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:27 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 2.Fake Audit trail entries as emails and append to mbox archive > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:41 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 3.Continue to use existing PR datafile for logging events, keywords, and metadata > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:55:58 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 3.Account enhancements > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:56:29 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.PAM Authentication (Pankaj) > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:56:45 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > (Pankaj expressed interest in this on 2004-06-14) > 4.Unassigned > Added: Fri Jun 11 13:50:51 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 1.Add squirrels, to make pst happy. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:32 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: high > > 2.Add conditional formats > Added: Fri Jun 11 13:56:21 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Need more information - what is this? > > 3.Add script hooks, probably for edit formats and such. Need to think about how to > integrate in changes to the PR done by the script > Added: Fri Jun 11 13:57:38 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Ahh, script hooks. This would be extremely valuable. > > (after all, that's really the whole point) > 4.Allow fields to not exist; add a "field-always-present" option to the field description > Added: Fri Jun 11 13:58:17 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > Need more information - what is this? While we're here, together with a work colleague, we've revised the way 'required' fields are implemented. Our primary motivation was to simplify the way they're expressed in the dbconfig and also to enhance the validation logic (check_pr) so that missing required field errors are caught prior to a PR being submitted. This feature does away with the requirement to have an "on-change { require }" clause in each required field along with a "require { field }" clause in the initial-fields section of the dbconfig. These are replaced with a simple "required" flag in the field definition. We're adding an optional condition to this flag...so that it's possible to have conditional required fields. The value of doing it this way is that the dbconfig syntax required for defining a required field is localized to the field definition and not spread out in different areas of the dbconfig. This makes it very easy to follow the "required field logic" in the dbconfig and assists the GNATS administrator in preventing errors. > 5.Add virtual fields. > Added: Fri Jun 11 13:59:28 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > (The output format can use the existing format mechanism. This would necessitate having a > "no-display" field flag, so that some fields don't show up in a "full" query (adding all > the fields to full" is a rather obnoxious requirement). There should also be a "raw" > query that dumps all the real fields as raw contents, for editing purposes (and perhaps > for other things).) > 6.Revise access control mechanisms. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:39:12 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Cool...I think this would be a valuable endevour. > > 7.Should PRs have a ">Database-Name:" header? Probably, and probably immutable. Can be > used when editing a PR, or submitting an initial one. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:39:27 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Hmmm, this reminds me of another feature I've been considering. It'd be valuable to investigate the use of non-numeric PR ids. For example, a 3 letter prefix to the PR number might provide a useful way to route PRs to a specific GNATS database. > > 8.Append-only fields. Need to revise access control first. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:40:05 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 9.Document functions. Many of them are undocumented (even newly-added ones, shame). > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:41:10 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 10.See how much farther we can go with removing knowledge of particular fields from the > gnats code. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:03 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Yes...I think this would be a valuable endevour. > > 11.Make it possible to include adm field contents in the configuration file, instead of > always using an external config file. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:42:59 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium I'm not sure I see the benefit. > > 12.The database state is not clean. There should be a struct that describes the current > database, and is passed around as needed. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:43:22 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium Isn't this the DatabaseInfo struct? > > 13.The client state is not clean. The API is horrid; clients should not know or care if > they're communicating via the network or locally. The original solution was to just > allow network access, but that's not really fixing the problem. (We'll know we're there > when gnatsd can act as a relay.) > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:43:55 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium localhost mode must die. If the original solution was to do away with localhost mode and rely solely on network mode, why doesn't this fix the problem exactly? > > 14.The client connection to the server should also be encapsulated in a struct as well. That > is, something to describe the client (its hostname, username, password, access level). > Could eventually allow for a single server process that handles multiple connections. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:44:32 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > 15.Change edit-pr to include the "Changed-Why:" header in the initial PR template instead of > a separate prompt. Maybe. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:24:46 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: low Or, at least bounce the user into a second edit session to specify the reason. The current method of prompting the user for the reason provides no avenue of escape if the user decides they want to change a line above. > > 16.Should all the fields listed in the input section be required? Configurable? How about > rejecting initial erroneous PRs (PRs with bad fields) instead of fixing them up? It sucks > that pr-edit --submit < /dev/null could quite presumably create a valid PR. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:25:50 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: low I would argue that they should *not* all be required. Configurable yes...this is essentially what I described above in #4 I believe. > > 17.The initial PR filing stuff is way too complicated. In particular, the various field > checks should be configured in dbconfig. That would let us remove more builtin fields. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:38:18 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: low Yep. Anything we can do to remove the builtin fields is worthwhile. > > 18.Decide if the "exec gnatsd locally" option is a security hole. (Probably.) Make it #if > TESTING only? > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:38:30 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: low > > 19.Come up with a better name for the lexer source file. > Added: Fri Jun 11 14:41:35 2004 Completed: incomplete > Duration: incomplete Priority: low > I've grown rather fond of fconfigl.l ;-) Extending on these unassigned items, it'd be wothwhile considering how one might go about creating dynamic views - i.e. to narrow down on applicable field values based on the selection of other field values. As an example, when class is set to 'hw-bug' only show the h/w categories to the user. This would obviously be handled (or not) by the client, however, before considering how the client does this, we should consider how we can capture the necessary information to allow the client to implement this. I think the dbconfig would be the right place to capture this and have some ideas about how this might be expressed (which build on the filtering idea I presented above for mail-format recipients). Finally, it's also worthwhile considering a PR version feature. Often times, a PR manifests itself differently on different platforms, or is in different states for different releases. I've put together a rough draft of a design document for how this might be done...which I'd be happy to share with you after I review it a few more times. -- Mel Hatzis _______________________________________________ Help-gnats mailing list Help-gnats@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnats ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: The TODO list and planning a release schedule 2004-06-20 16:43 ` The TODO list and planning a release schedule Mel Hatzis @ 2004-06-20 17:06 ` Chad Walstrom 0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread From: Chad Walstrom @ 2004-06-20 17:06 UTC (permalink / raw) To: help-gnats [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 13734 bytes --] Mel Hatzis wrote: > While we're here, if you try building from a directory other than the > top-level source directory, say by creating $topdir/objdir and running > ../configure from the objdir directory, the --with-submitter and > --with-organization configure flags end up getting ignored. > > I've got a fix for this...which basically involves removing all > references to the DEFAULT_ORGANIZATION and SUBMITTER macros from the > $topdir/gnats build files - thereby preventing the config-send-pr > target from screwing things up for send-pr. The fixes are certainly welcome. I'm not the most familiar with autoconf scripts, but I have a feeling I'll become much more intimately knowledgeable in the near future. ;-) I think there could definitely be some improvement and streamlining to the build process. I always found it confusing why we have multiple configure scripts instead of just one. Something to look at, anyway. > I've also got a patch for the doc/Makefile.in so that no attempt is > made to build the info targets if the 'makeinfo' program cannot be > found. Excellent. > Finally, it'd be really cool if we could add 'make test' to the > build/install process. The real difficulty in achieving this, IMO, is > that there's no way to run gnatsd without first installing it ...since > it looks for the databases file. Perhaps adding a command line switch > to gnatsd for specifying the path to the databases file would work > around this limitation. Great suggestion! I would suggest these types of feature enhancements go into the 4.2 release. > I've put together a regression test suite which I may be able to work > into the build process. Unfortunately, it uses a small perl component > for setting up the database which will need to be reworked as a shell > script. Cool. > > 2.Add missing manpages -- one manpage for each application > > 3.Kill install-sid script and update documentation > > 4.Update Documentation: Set developer's policy. > > All the above are good. I need to dig around...I have many bug fixes > to provide. Since they've been made in the context of the gnats-dbi > project I've been working on, it's going to be a little bit of a > hassle finding them all and putting patches together. Take your time. Unless it's a critical functionality fix, security fix, or simple fix, it should probably be moved to later releases anyway. > > 2.Release 4.2: New Features > > 1.Mail handling enhancements > > 1.Mail-based manipulation of GNATS database (Mel) > > > > 2.Trigger-based mail format replies (Mel) > > 14:49:28 2004 > > Priority: medium > > > > 3.Enable To: address@bogus.example.com syntax to queue-pr > > > > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > I'm not clear on #3...can you elaborate. The listserver munged the email address. Let's try it in a way it won't easily recognize my intention: prnumber-AT-domain-DOT-tld I would love to queue off the PR number directly, the same way that the Debian BTS handles bug tracking. It's far, far easier to parse a number than subject lines. The whole "CATEGORY/PRNUMBER:" is difficult for me to sell, even our staff. I have one co-worker who refuses to send email to help--at--domain--dot--tld because she can never remember (refuses to remember) that syntax requirement. Were I to CNAME the bug server and send to prnumber-AT-help-DOT-domain-DOT-tld > Also, I've recently implemented something else you might find > valuable...it's a filter which you can apply to a mail-format for > limiting the list of recipients. This is useful in the context of a > view into the PR database...which is possible with the Oracle backend. Sweet. ;-) > > 2.MIME Handling > > 1.Detach files appropriately for GNATS DB format > > 2.Convert HTML to TXT? > > I like these...I started scoping this using the MIME::Parser and > MIME::Decoder perl modules but didn't get very far. MIME handling > could also support an attachment feature which I would love to see > added to the project. I would love to leverage the GNU Mailutils project for these mail-handling libraries. Perhaps item 2.2. should be titled "MIME Filtering" so we could define rules based on MIME type of the submission. Additionally, these MIME features could be held off until after your big DB abstraction and rolling in your existing fixes and features. Let's take advantage of what we have before extending our reach too far. > > 3.Release 5.0: New Features, Major Changes to DB Layer, RDBMS > > 1.Database Enhancements > > 1.DB Abstraction Layer (Mel) > > 2.Oracle RDBMS Backend > > You might want to add PostgreSQL as a 3rd item. I've started putting > this together. Will do. > The development for the Oracle backend is pretty much done... Sweet! > A 4th item for Release 5.0 features might be support for transactions. > After doing away with the need for a global gnats lock (using the > Oracle backend), it has become an interesting challenge to see how far > one can go in removing the need for a user to take out a PR lock. In > organizations with large user bases and large numbers of PRs, the > current method of having an edit client lock the PR is sub-optimal. Should we hold this off until 5.1, or do you think this support could be rolled in with the DB changes you've already made? > > 4.Unassigned > > 1.Add squirrels, to make pst happy. > > 2.Add conditional formats > > Need more information - what is this? Honestly, I don't know. All of these "Unassigned" items were in the old TODO list. I didn't even go over them in detail. If some of the old-school developers could pipe in, we may gain some more insight. If I had to guess, I'm assuming that conditional formats may mean flow-control logic. if-then-else and while-do statements? Not sure if this is needed. > > 3.Add script hooks, probably for edit formats and such. Need > > to think about how to integrate in changes to the PR done by > > the script > > Ahh, script hooks. This would be extremely valuable. *NOD* > > 4.Allow fields to not exist; add a "field-always-present" option to > > the field description > > Need more information - what is this? Again, not sure. I'm assuming that it's an implication toward the database format itself. There are many fields that we don't touch as a Help-Center tool. We just want to know the Originator, a description of the problem, and have a way to assign the problem to techs. Since we're not doing Accounts Receivable, trying to track time, or categorizing bug types (much), a slimmed down database would really help. > While we're here, together with a work colleague, we've revised the > way 'required' fields are implemented. Our primary motivation was to > simplify the way they're expressed in the dbconfig and also to enhance > the validation logic (check_pr) so that missing required field errors > are caught prior to a PR being submitted. > > This feature does away with the requirement to have an "on-change { > require }" clause in each required field along with a "require { field > }" clause in the initial-fields section of the dbconfig. These are > replaced with a simple "required" flag in the field definition. > > We're adding an optional condition to this flag...so that it's > possible to have conditional required fields. The value of doing it > this way is that the dbconfig syntax required for defining a required > field is localized to the field definition and not spread out in > different areas of the dbconfig. This makes it very easy to follow the > "required field logic" in the dbconfig and assists the GNATS > administrator in preventing errors. Sweet! Yet another Mel & Co addition that I'd love to have in 5.0. > > 7.Should PRs have a ">Database-Name:" header? Probably, and > > probably immutable. Can be used when editing a PR, or > > submitting an initial one. > > Hmmm, this reminds me of another feature I've been considering. It'd > be valuable to investigate the use of non-numeric PR ids. For > example, a 3 letter prefix to the PR number might provide a useful way > to route PRs to a specific GNATS database. Or simply a UUID generated hash, but then that gets to be too "difficult" for end-users to deal with. Although a 3-letter prefix specific to the database may be useful when routing PR's for multiple databases through the same host name in emails. To: pfx-prnumber--at--host-domain-tld OR Subject: PFX-PRNUM: Blah blah blah The cagetory is mostly useless for determining what identity of the PR is. > > 11.Make it possible to include adm field contents in the > > configuration file, instead of always using an external config > > file. > > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > I'm not sure I see the benefit. I agree. Perhaps someone could shed some light on this one? > > > > 12.The database state is not clean. There should be a struct > > that describes the current database, and is passed around as > > needed. > > Duration: incomplete Priority: medium > > Isn't this the DatabaseInfo struct? Probably a legacy TODO that didn't get scratched off the list. I'll remove it. > > 13.The client state is not clean. The API is horrid; clients > > should not know or care if they're communicating via the network > > or locally. The original solution was to just allow network > > access, but that's not really fixing the problem. (We'll know > > we're there when gnatsd can act as a relay.) > > 14:43:55 2004 > > Priority: medium > > localhost mode must die. If the original solution was to do away with > localhost mode and rely solely on network mode, why doesn't this fix > the problem exactly? Again, not sure. Anyone? I don't see any reason why a local client can't talk to gnatsd through the local loopback device. I don't know of a modern operating system that doesn't work perfectly well this way. IMHO, the clients should only operate through the daemon. Let the daemon handle locking issues and file permissions rather than relying upon client knowledge of the filesystem. We can take a closer look at this and see what the current state of the code is. > > 15.Change edit-pr to include the "Changed-Why:" header in the > > initial PR template instead of a separate prompt. Maybe. > > Or, at least bounce the user into a second edit session to specify the > reason. The current method of prompting the user for the reason > provides no avenue of escape if the user decides they want to change a > line above. Integrating libreadline into console clients would help this out. Allow the user to decide when to enter an external editor (i.e. the 'v' key in vi editing-mode). > > 16.Should all the fields listed in the input section be > > required? Configurable? How about rejecting initial erroneous > > PRs (PRs with bad fields) instead of fixing them up? It sucks > > that pr-edit --submit < /dev/null could quite presumably create > > a valid PR. > > incomplete Duration: incomplete Priority: low > > I would argue that they should *not* all be required. Configurable > yes...this is essentially what I described above in #4 I believe. Agreed. Should I kill this one, then? > > 17.The initial PR filing stuff is way too complicated. In > > particular, the various field checks should be configured in > > dbconfig. That would let us remove more builtin fields. > > Yep. Anything we can do to remove the builtin fields is worthwhile. Agreed. > I've grown rather fond of fconfigl.l ;-) ;-) > Extending on these unassigned items, it'd be wothwhile considering how > one might go about creating dynamic views - i.e. to narrow down on > applicable field values based on the selection of other field values. > As an example, when class is set to 'hw-bug' only show the h/w > categories to the user. This would obviously be handled (or not) by > the client, however, before considering how the client does this, we > should consider how we can capture the necessary information to allow > the client to implement this. I think the dbconfig would be the right > place to capture this and have some ideas about how this might be > expressed (which build on the filtering idea I presented above for > mail-format recipients). > > Finally, it's also worthwhile considering a PR version feature. Often > times, a PR manifests itself differently on different platforms, or is > in different states for different releases. I've put together a rough > draft of a design document for how this might be done...which I'd be > happy to share with you after I review it a few more times. Good idea. I think we should probably include a discussion document on planned features that correlate to the TODO list. DevTodo is a pretty nice piece of software to manage lists, but it does have a way to go before it's comment feature is well integrated. Perhaps a TODO.Discuss or TODO.Readme to which developers could add the "Why's" and "How's" would be valuable. I know not everyone is proficient with texinfo format docs, but we could push these reasons into gnats-dev.texi document. -- Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/ assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */ [-- Attachment #1.2: Digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 140 bytes --] _______________________________________________ Help-gnats mailing list Help-gnats@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnats ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-06-17 16:48 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 4+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2004-06-17 9:24 The TODO list and planning a release schedule Chad Walstrom 2004-06-17 16:48 ` CVS Branching and Merging Chad Walstrom 2004-06-20 16:43 ` The TODO list and planning a release schedule Mel Hatzis 2004-06-20 17:06 ` Chad Walstrom
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox; as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).