Message-ID: <32209efe0805220920h1a2a0089t82b0173bbe239137@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 22 May 2008 09:20:46 -0700
From:	"Natalie Protasevich" <protasnb@...il.com>
To:	"Adrian Bunk" <bunk@...nel.org>
Cc:	"Arjan van de Ven" <arjan@...radead.org>,
	"Bosko Radivojevic" <bosko.radivojevic@...il.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Number of bugs - statistics

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 07:51:35AM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 May 2008 17:41:14 +0300
>> Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org> wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 02:28:17PM +0200, Bosko Radivojevic wrote:
>> >
>> > > Hi!
>> >
>> > Hi Bosko!
>> >
>> > > Is there any kind of analysis of number of (reported or resolved)
>> > > bugs through time in Linux kernel floating around? I'm trying to
>> > > convince my colleagues that newer kernel version does not mean more
>> > > bugs than the previous 'well tested' ones.
>> >
>> > We definitely have many regressions (something that previously worked
>> > does no longer work) in each kernel.
>>
>> ... and many of those regressions are things people are unlikely to
>> hit. And we fix many long standing bugs as well.
>>
>> Maybe some other data:
>> * The incoming rate of ACPI bugs has been pretty much flat the last 3
>> years, while the number of Linux (and ACPI) users has grown
>> significantly. The number of unfixed bugs has more than halved, from
>> over 200 to well below 100.
>> * The SCSI maintainer also reports that he sees flat to declining bug
>> rates; again with the increase in Linux user base that is a good sign
>
> Andrew sees and handles the majority of incoming bug reports.
> Ask him whether he agress with this.
>
> And ALSA alone has 2000 open bug reports, which makes the open ACPI or
> SCSI bug numbers relatively irrelevant in any "number of bugs"
> statistics.
>
>> > > Any kind of (research) reports or papers that address this issue is
>> > > more than welcome.
>> >
>> > Any such reports or papers would anyway be flawed since we have no
>> > data one could use for doing serious statistics.
>>
>> We have data for 2.6.25 at least, on which we can and do serious
>> statistics.
>>...
>
> Where do we have data for 2.6.25 covering all kinds of bugs?
>
> Regressions reported before 2.6.25 and Oops'es etc. are only a small
> part of the picture.

There is no unified tracking mechanism as of now, this is a big
problem. There are some projects that have ideas about universal bug
tracking, for example some people from KDE team expressed their ideas,
I'm planning to get back with them.
It would be great if all reports from known and unknown bugzillas were
piped into one place and sorted out, by various criteria: ALSA bugs
are numerous, which is not important for most enterprise server users
who would completely disregard this category, whereas desktop users
will probably concentrate on those more than any other. So the answer
to question about kernel stability would be more adequate depending on
who's asking.

--Natalie

> cu
> Adrian
>
> --
>
>       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
>        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
>       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
>                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
>
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