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Ubuntu debuts its Upstream ReportUbuntu debuts its Upstream ReportPosted Oct 2, 2008 6:57 UTC (Thu) by quozl (guest, #18798)Parent article: Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report
I'm upstream for pptp-linux and pptpd. I had cornered Mark at a linux.conf.au some years ago complaining that Ubuntu were fixing things and not passing anything back to me, and he said he'd look into it.
Your article here has encouraged me to have a quick look ... the Ubuntu bugs for pptp-linux are quite extensive, and I feel cheated, I didn't know there was such a rich body of input for me. I'll be busy for some time now. I only wish they had been passed upstream more slowly!
Hint for upstreams ... create an account on launchpad and ask it to deliver you bug reports. Do Ubuntu's work for them. Ignore the bugs that are obviously distribution specific. Run multiple bug trackers. Sigh.
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Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 9:32 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
... and soon any upstream project will be tracking a dozen different bug trackers. Have fun.
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 16:13 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
if you don't like integrating multiple bug trackers you have the following options.
not allow the distros to have their own bug trackers and force users to take everything directly to the upstream bug trackers (including distro specific bugs)
the current status-quo where you have a lot of independant bug trackers and no linkage between them.
it's far better to have the upstream bug trackers tied in with dozens of distro bug trackers.
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 13:49 UTC (Thu) by markshuttle (subscriber, #22379) [Link]
If you run Bugzilla or Trac, you might want to try the plugins that Canonical sponsored, which should let comments flow in both directions between Launchpad and your bug tracker. That will make coordinating existing reports that are appropriately linked much easier.
We haven't yet added the ability to pass bug reports to another bug tracker automatically, for fear of spamming upstream bug trackers. If you can find a community member who is particularly interested in pptp and Ubuntu then they could easily play that role, as there isn't a dedicated person maintaining pptp in Ubuntu.
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 18:24 UTC (Thu) by jsbarnes (subscriber, #4096) [Link]
I actually prefer having a triager from Canonical/Ubuntu deal with
forwarding information on from Launchpad by hand. IME Launchpad issues are often filed directly by (sometimes nontechnical) users, which is great in terms of accessibility and openness, but can create a lot of noise that distracts from the underlying issue. I don't know how many times I've looked at a Launchpad issue and see a user say something like, "Oh yeah I see this problem too, only [I'm running totally different hardware and software and seeing a different issue entirely]". :)
The downside is that responsiveness is bottlenecked on the triager, but
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 20:26 UTC (Thu) by bryce (subscriber, #16388) [Link]
I think the comment forwarding would be the most valuable thing here. I agree with Mark and Jesse on the cons of auto-upstreaming bugs.
Comment forwarding would remove the triager as the bottleneck for communication between the reporter and upstream. I make it a policy to always ask the user to register with the FDO bug tracker when I upstream their bug, but unfortunately they do so only about half the time. The other half, I'm in the position of cut-and-pasting questions and replies between upstream and the reporter.
With automatic bug upstreaming, in theory it sounds like a great idea, since the bug upstreaming process takes a considerable amount of time. But in practice it's far from a simple matter. Like Jesse points out, many ubuntu bug reporters aren't knowledgeable in what to include to make a useful report, or add noise to the bug report that distracts from the core issue. So an important step in upstreaming a bug is revising the description, condensing out irrelevant comments, ensuring that logs, backtraces, and so forth are present and relevant to the issue, etc. None of this is easy to do with a script...
However, I do think there are aspects that can be coded around to make portions of the process easier. To pick just one example, in Intrepid we're introducing Xorg-specific hooks for the apport bug reporting toolset, so to file a ubuntu bug against xorg, just run 'ubuntu-bug xorg'. It automatically retrieves and includes xorg.conf, Xorg.0.log, gdm logs, lspci output, and so on. Should save the reporter lots of time, and eliminates back-and-forth between the reporter and the triager. Stuff like the intel reg dumper tool or other special package-specific tools can be hooked in as well.
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 2, 2008 19:24 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
I'm partially upstream and partially Debian maintainer for a certain package.
The Ubuntu maintainers for that package and similar packages are the "Masters of the Universe". Those great masters never seem to triage bugs and forward bugs upstream. Debian packages should (and mostly do) follow up on issues and update upstream. The Ubuntu Universe packages tend to have no real maintainer.
And it is not the job of upstream to triage Ubuntu bugs. Upstream is not qualified to guess that Ubuntu Beastie Barbie is actually ubuntu 5.999 and this naturally implies libc6 2.11, libken 1:5.21 and liberty 3.14159 . Yes, those would be trivial to find from http://packages.ubuntu.com, but does upstream know about that? Does upstream know that it is actually a good idea to ask about sources.list because the user might have tried to upgrade?
Upstream should not need to face the specific quirks of each distribution. This is what packagers / power users are for.
Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report Posted Oct 9, 2008 11:25 UTC (Thu) by azrael (guest, #53640) [Link]
"I'm upstream for pptp-linux and pptpd. I had cornered Mark at a linux.conf.au some years ago complaining that Ubuntu were fixing things and not passing anything back to me, and he said he'd look into it.
Your article here has encouraged me to have a quick look ... the Ubuntu bugs for pptp-linux are quite extensive, and I feel cheated, I didn't know there was such a rich body of input for me. I'll be busy for some time now. I only wish they had been passed upstream more slowly!"
And you would expect Mark to check every single upstream project if they are receiving the patches from Ubuntu? Please...
Why didn't you contact with Ubuntu developers/maintainers directly? A single mail to ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com would be probably enough.
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