[Scilab-Dev] http://bugzilla.scilab.org - Severity of bugs

[François Vogel]

Sylvestre,

This is VERY good news. Anything that can help in understanding and 
setting priorities looks good to me. As already discussed with you, it 
would really help if rules in the Scilab project would exist, be 
written down, and be exposed publicly. This is a vast subject, on 
which bugs priority is only one side, and that any free software 
project has to deal with I think.


> These small changes aim to be able to quickly create a kind of list of
> bug "must be fixed for Scilab 5.0" (Blocker or Critical) , "Could be
> painfull if we don't do it" (Major), "Can be fixed if we have
> time" (Medium) or "won't do it for the next release" (Minor or
> Trivial)...

The meaning of each level of severity should be documented somewhere, 
either in Bugzilla directly, or perhaps in the wiki. There should be 
an unambiguous description of what Major means for instance, and you 
say it above nicely. Major may mean something very different to 
different people.

Also, who decides of whether a bug will be major, minor, etc.? Rules 
again.

> Consequently, please, take a few seconds to update this field. Pick up
> the severity you estimate to be the right one.

So the OP decides? Perhaps as a first step only?


The latest Bugzilla also introduced a new field: Priority. How to set 
it properly? What do the five priority levels mean?


> In the mean time, we are going to reopen all bug classified as "LATER"
> and use the tag/keyword system:
> http://bugzilla.scilab.org/describekeywords.cgi

Also a VERY good idea IMO. I was wondering for years what LATER means, 
especially when associated with "RESOLVED".

Maybe a suggestion on the keywords: as an example, perhaps 
Fix_me_for_next_Scilab would be more appropriate than 
Fix_me_for_Scilab_5.x. The reason I see is keywords updating when you 
release a version, and keywords outdating. Just my 2cts.

Also, again, who decides whether a bug should be tagged with a given 
keyword, for instance "Fix_me_for_Scilab_5.0-beta"? What are the 
applicable rules in case of a disagreement between people on the 
severity, priority, etc.?


On the same subject, what about bugs tagged as "REMIND"? Will you also 
reopen them?


And since we are here, do you have any opinion about voting for bugs? 
Bugzilla has this capability and it would allow for better sensing 
feelings of the community I think, although it's perhaps a second step 
to consider when the rest above gets more mature.


Cheers,
Francois

PS: About helpful rules, my usual example is this well-known one: 
http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/0