Development process issues [LWN.net]

Development process issues

Posted May 5, 2011 4:16 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: Development process issues by josh
Parent article: New features in PostgreSQL 9.1

I think the usefulness of a bug tracker really depends on how active a project is. For Linux, Git and PostgreSQL they are less useful than in that random game that got abandoned a number of years ago that you want to revive. In the latter situation a pre-existing roadmap (bug list) can be useful.

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Development process issues

Posted May 6, 2011 16:00 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

There's another benefit to a bug tracker: it relieves some of the need for developers to work on the bug at all.

When I report bugs in bug trackers, even with fixes, I rarely expect to see a fix in the distribution. I just want my work to be available to other users so they don't have to duplicate it. Users can see "it's not just me, the code/documentation is broken" and find workarounds and patches to fix it locally.

In fact, often the bug I reported is already in the database, but by using different words to describe it, I make it easier for the next user not to miss it.

In a project where developers keep up with bug reports (and actually respond rather than just dismissing them), a bug tracker is probably a net loss to the community compared to email.