linux-kernel - Re: Linux 2.6.21

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Date:	Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:40:31 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Markus Rechberger <mrechberger@...il.com>
cc:	Adrian Bunk <bunk@...sta.de>, Diego Calleja <diegocg@...il.com>,
	Chuck Ebbert <cebbert@...hat.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.21

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007, Markus Rechberger wrote:
> 
> I totally disagree here, bugzilla is a very good tool. If someone is
> too lazy to look at it it's his problem.

You must be doing things very differently from a lot of other people if 
you think that's the case.

> Kernel Janitors can pick out some bugs which aren't addressed by
> anyone or got left behind.

IF that happened, it would actually be great. That's what I'm arguing for. 
And it was basically what Adrian was doing!

> How else should bugs get handled, sending them to the lkml?

Actually, looking at Adrian's regression lists, yes. lkml worked better 
than bugzilla did. By at _least_ a factor of two.

> I'm 100% sure some bugreports will also get lost then, but on the lkml
> they'll very likely remain lost whereas in the bugzilla they'll remain
> as open.

What's the difference between bugzilla and lkml.org? Both have search 
buttons. Both archive the old stuff. Both can be pointed to.

> what are your suggestions to improve a bugreporting tool, I'm very
> sure that many people, especially people who want to get into existing
> projects here, would love to contribute.

I don't know what the perfect setup is, but I do know that bugzilla is 
very close to be totally useless for the top-level maintainers.

Try to think like a person who doesn't maintain *one* specific file in the 
kernel, but who can actually make a good judgement about a lot of things, 
or at least funnel a problem report to the right person?

And now, imagine that that person is also fairly busy (exactly *because* 
he's not looking at a single file, he may be maintaining a huge subsystem 
that has multiple submaintainers etc).

And ask yourself whether bugzilla really helps.

> I'd say this is a personal opinion, some people will get along with it
> and some of them will not...

I think bugzilla really only works for very "directed" issues. If you 
already know exactly which driver is affected (which is often wrong 
anyway: some of the bugs that were due timer breakage got blamed as disk 
hangs!) it's almost totally useless.

And yes, maybe that's why you have a much higher opinion of bugzilla than 
I do. To _me_ bugzilla is a total mess. There's absolutely _zero_ useful 
information there. And I'm pretty certain that is true of a *lot* of other 
people too. But if you have a small project, or you maintain a very 
specific (and clearly delineated) part of a big project, bugzilla probably 
looks a lot more palatable.

			Linus
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