[Tinyos-alliance] Bug policy

[Matt Welsh]

One of the reasons the email list works so well is that it gives an
immediate alert that there's a bug, and in some sense there's a public
airing of the grievance. If several folks email the same bug report to
the list it should become obvious that it's a real problem that needs to
be fixed. My guess is that a fair number of the bug reports we see on SF
are difficult or impossible to reproduce as they may be related to the
user's environment and familiarity with the tools.

Also, getting regular email reminders of the bugs assigned to me would
be a great thing. I was surprised to find I do have bugs assigned to me
at all.

One approach would be to have a 'bugs czar' who is responsible for
tracking the current set of bug reports, assigning them to developers,
and nagging people on a regular basis. At least that way one person
should be on top of what the status of the various bug reports are and
can marshal them through the process. I think right now it's not clear
who's responsible for what.

Finally, I'm not sure how to get to the bugs database on SF. When I go
to tinyos.sourceforge.net and click on 'report a bug' it takes me to an
outdated 'how to contribute code' page; just below this link there is a
more recent 'how to contribute' page. I guess the magic URL is

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=28656&atid=393934



On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 17:22 -0800, Philip Levis wrote:
> I'm cross-posting this because I think it involves both WGs. On one  
> hand, core is the WG that has to deal with the issues most. On the  
> other, the policies could have big implications on the relationship  
> of individuals to the WG process, so it's good to have alliance  
> involved.
> 
> All of the issues with bug reporting and TinyOS boil down to this:  
> what do we do when someone doesn't respond to bug reports assigned to  
> them?
> 
> If the assignment is in error, the person can always reassign it;  
> that's rarely the problem. Instead, we have bug reports which have  
> been sitting on the tracker for years, with no response.
> 
> The current approach is that users post bug reports either to the  
> sourceforge bug tracker or mail them to tinyos-help. Generally  
> response on the latter is better than the former, but the mailing  
> list doesn't provide a good mechanism to track whether they have been  
> dealt with or not.
> 
> So here's the proposal:
> 
> We point users to the mailing list tinyos-bugs, and there's a web  
> page giving some guidance on how you should report a bug. To have  
> commit privileges to tinyos-2.x you must be on the list. There's one  
> or more moderators who filter out spam. When a bug report comes in,  
> anyone on the list can review it to decide if it is truly a bug. If  
> it is, then that person enters it into the sourceforge bug tracker  
> and assigns it to the most valid developer (who can reassign it if  
> need be).
> 
> If a developer doesn't respond to a bug report (note: respond does  
> not mean "fix", just acknowledge it and what's going on, the SF page  
> has mechanisms for doing this) within 30 days, then we send a warning  
> to the working group responsible for the subsystem it relates to. If  
> there is no response to the bug in another week, then we do something  
> drastic... (remove commit privileges for the WG?)
> 
> Phil
> 
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