MozillaZine

FreeDOS Project Using Bugzilla

Sunday March 16th, 2003

willll writes: "Looks like the people at FreeDOS are using Bugzilla for their bug tracking system."

#1 Can't people let the dead be dead already?

by robdogg

Sunday March 16th, 2003 1:42 PM

And that goes for os/2 as well

#2 When Windows goes down

by willll

Sunday March 16th, 2003 2:13 PM

FreeDOS to the rescue

#5 Re: When Windows goes down

by robdogg

Sunday March 16th, 2003 2:32 PM

You mean you've never heard of a Windows rescue disk? It gives you a dos prompt with all the necessary tools.

#37 It's not the same

by pizzach

Monday March 17th, 2003 7:53 PM

A rescue disk in many cases doesn't have a lot of drivers. Example....a mouse driver. If anyone notices Dos in anything after windows 3.11 sucks...and its because microsoft wanted to kill it. Dos is a good old standby OS, but freedos is free. :) which is a great way for backwards compatibility. (excuse me if this rant doesn't make too much sense, I use a macintosh and like to emu dos)

#10 Re: Can't people let the dead be dead already?

by mesostinky

Sunday March 16th, 2003 8:33 PM

You actually think that there aren't any companies out there who still have some Dos apps running? This is especially true in some Industrial/Manufacturing situations. Same goes for OS/2 as well since there is still of whole bunch of that out there. Neither one of those are "dead" and they won't be for a while still. Since MS no longer supports their version of Dos anymore its nice that there is a free active GPL'd version of it available that companies can use and modify to fit their needs.

The age of something does not always define its usefulness, and your needs are not the same as everyone else's.

#3 It sure is well used

by WillyWonka

Sunday March 16th, 2003 2:27 PM

All I could find in the database were 2 bug reports. :)

#7 Re: It sure is well used

by AlexBishop

Sunday March 16th, 2003 4:35 PM

"All I could find in the database were 2 bug reports. :)"

I found 174.

Alex

#36 Any increase on 1600?

by thelem

Monday March 17th, 2003 5:01 PM

See http://www.freedos.org/bugs/bugzilla/reports.cgi?product=-All-&output=most_doomed&links=1&banner=1&quip=0

I can see 2 bugs reported in the last week, 116 open bugs and the highest bug number I listed on that page is 1600

#4 Superior

by admiraljusti

Sunday March 16th, 2003 2:29 PM

Shows you how good Bugzilla is, don't it???

#8 Re: Superior

by ccapeng

Sunday March 16th, 2003 6:27 PM

I am definitly impressed by bugzilla, but I am curious two things:

1, Too slow. It shows "Please stand by ...", then wait for copule seconds to come out the results. 2, In MozillaNews bug search, I hit search without any criterias. Looks like it query the whole database and the result response won't stop until my windows 2000 crash. Buzilla is really solid like a rock.

#12 Re: Re: Superior

by robdogg

Sunday March 16th, 2003 8:53 PM

>>I am definitly impressed by bugzilla<<

I am NOT impressed by it. First, as someone mentioned, it sometimes takes a long time to return results. This can be solved by throwing a couple of indexes on the tables.

Secondly, it is really over-complicated. I've heard it several times where people didn't submit a bug because they couldn't figure out how.

For an example of an easy to use bug tracking system, I'd check out FogBugz.

#13 FogBugz

by jedbro

Sunday March 16th, 2003 10:11 PM

I've had very bad experience with FogBugz, sure the interface "looks" great, but functionallity on large Bug databases is shit. The interface was not made for Enterprise size programs (where you get hudred of bug checking's etc. pero day). There is no way Mozilla, linux, etc, could be tracked with FogBugz.

Although not all rant. It is definitally pleasing for small projects, I would definitally go with it. [quote] Secondly, it is really over-complicated. I've heard it several times where people didn't submit a bug because they couldn't figure out how. [/quote]

That's not nessecarily bad. I can't imagine how much MORE shit there would be in bugzilla if the tipical wanker (user) filed a bug for everything they see.

bugzilla is primarily for programers to track their own bugs (in closed source projects), few outside the development can start bugs, secondly they are not for everyone to submit, this is why TalkBack feature/ webforms and e-mails exist.

Again, this is not a rant on FogBugz, but I can't imagine a better system than bugzilla for this scale of a project. (true, for FreeDOS it could have been an option, if they had some extra cash they wanted to spend on good looks.

#14 Re: FogBugz

by AlexBishop

Sunday March 16th, 2003 10:29 PM

"There is no way Mozilla, linux, etc, could be tracked with FogBugz."

By my calculations, the license fees for Mozilla would be over $6,000,000 so you're right that it would not be a viable option.

Alex

#18 Re: FogBugz

by Gerv

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:26 AM

> bugzilla is primarily for programers to track their own bugs (in closed source projects), few outside the development can start bugs,

I have no idea where you got that idea. Bugzilla's features are primarily designed for open source projects - most of the defaults favour an open style of working. And it's certainly not primarily for programmers - QA people, managers and people who just report bugs use it successfully all the time. Talkback is no substitute for a good bug report.

Gerv

#17 Re: Re: Re: Superior

by Gerv

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:24 AM

> This can be solved by throwing a couple of indexes on the tables.

Why, goodness me. We didn't think of that. I'll go and add some immediately.

Seriously, do you not think that the Bugzilla schema has been carefully analysed? The real problem with bugzilla.mozilla.org is underpowered hardware for the massive amounts of use it gets. Still, we are working on performance improvements, like mod_perl support.

> Secondly, it is really over-complicated. I've heard it several times where people didn't submit a bug because they couldn't figure out how.

Bugzilla's UI is fully templatised, so you can produce easier bug entry forms if you'd like to do so. The KDE project has a bug reporting wizard, and Mozilla has the guided bug entry form: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided

Anyway, the default bug entry form, http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi isn't all that complicated.

Gerv

#21 Re: Re: Re: Re: Superior

by robdogg

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:57 AM

<quote> Why, goodness me. We didn't think of that. I'll go and add some immediately. Seriously, do you not think that the Bugzilla schema has been carefully analysed? The real problem with bugzilla.mozilla.org is underpowered hardware for the massive amounts of use it gets. Still, we are working on performance improvements, like mod_perl support. </quote>

Dude, I was running a lat/lon to address query system off MS Access in the Pentium 1 days, so don't tell about underpowered hardware. I am sure there aren't more bugs in mozilla than there are streets in US. Perhaps your RDBMS sucks, that's another story.

#39 Wrong deduction...

by Gerv

Tuesday March 18th, 2003 12:27 AM

If you think that the amount of data items in a database is the only thing that affects how it performs, then I need to buy one of those User Friendly Big Foam Cluebats. :-)

Gerv

#16 Re: Re: Superior

by Gerv

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:21 AM

> 1, Too slow. It shows "Please stand by ...", then wait for copule seconds to come out the results.

bugzilla.mozilla.org is very heavily used, and running on underpowered hardware. It would be nice to get some better stuff, but the money isn't there. The Bugzilla team are working on getting Bugzilla running under mod_perl, which should hopefully help.

> 2, In MozillaNews bug search, I hit search without any criterias. Looks like it query the whole database > and the result response won't stop until my windows 2000 crash.

That's a bug in the MozillaNews search; usually, Bugzilla won't let you do that.

Gerv

#25 Re: MozillaNews bug search

by jesusX

Monday March 17th, 2003 7:44 AM

"2, In MozillaNews bug search, I hit search without any criterias. Looks like it query the whole database and the result response won't stop until my windows 2000 crash."

Ew, we shouldn't be submitting blank queries. I'll have to mark that as needing fixed. From RSN on, you'll no longer be able to submit a blank query.

#6 Bugzilla

by djm

Sunday March 16th, 2003 4:19 PM

Bugzilla is excellent, and we use it for the portable version of OpenSSH. Unfortunately, it doesn't _appear_ to be very actively developed. There hasn't been a status update at http://www.bugzilla.org for months, and they only seem to come out when security patches are made available. None of the "upcoming features" listed in the status update have landed. The current stable version works pretty well, but we really want some of the new features (e.g. the request tracker).

#9 Re: Bugzilla

by bzbarsky

Sunday March 16th, 2003 7:02 PM

hmm? The request tracker was rolled out in bugzilla.mozilla.org, so I assume it landed in the main Bugzilla tree....

#15 Re: Re: Bugzilla

by djm

Sunday March 16th, 2003 11:18 PM

Not in the stable (2.16.x) branch. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98801

#29 Re: Re: Re: Bugzilla

by bzbarsky

Monday March 17th, 2003 10:38 AM

Um... features like that should certainly not be going into a stable branch... That's what "stable" means.

So the real issue is that it's been a few months since the last stable branch? Seems pretty reasonable to me (Mozilla itself goes about 2.5 months between such, and that time may need lengthening)

#33 Re: Re: Re: Re: Bugzilla

by djm

Monday March 17th, 2003 2:39 PM

2.5 months would be fine by me. It has been six months since the last stable branch. Not everyone has mozilla.org's resources to run and monitor an unstable version on a public server.

#40 Feel free to pitch in if we're going slowly

by Gerv

Tuesday March 18th, 2003 12:32 AM

> It has been six months since the last stable branch.

Well, we're doing a lot of work :-) I'm sorry we're keeping you waiting - feel free to pitch in and help if you want stuff finished quicker.

Gerv

#20 Re: Bugzilla

by Gerv

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:36 AM

> Unfortunately, it doesn't _appear_ to be very actively developed.

Where have you been looking?

> There hasn't been a status update at (LINK) for months

Two and a half months. Hardly inactive. They are an effort to put together, so we usually only do one at release time.

For details of activity, check the support newsgroup: news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.webtools , which has traffic of about 20 messages a day, and the developers mailing list http://bugzilla.org/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr?func=lists-long-full&extra=developers which has about half that.

But the major obvious sign of healthy continuing development is the large number of bugs fixed and features landed recently. Checkins in the last month: http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=Bugzilla&branch=HEAD&branchtype=match&dir=&file=&filetype=match&who=&whotype=match&sortby=Date&hours=2&date=month&mindate=&maxdate=&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot

Bugs fixed in the last month: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=Bugzilla&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailtype2=exact&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&changedin=&chfield=resolution&chfieldfrom=2003-02-17&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=FIXED&cmdtype=doit&remaction=run&namedcmd=2.18&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=

The feature you mention, and many others, are in the latest development version, 2.17.3. It's not currently appropriate to release a stable version, as Bugzilla is going through a lot of changes (healthy development :-). Among the patches waiting on the sidelines are a complete rewrite of the charting-over-time engine and pluggable authentication.

So development is chugging along nicely, thanks :-)

Gerv

#30 Weekly checkins to bugzilla

by rwall

Monday March 17th, 2003 10:54 AM

You can also follow weekly checkins to bugzilla at backprop.net:

http://backprop.net/mozilla/bonsaibugs/index.php?branch=bugzilla

This script cross references bug numbers in checkin comments with the bug summaries in bugzilla.

#42 Re: Re: Bugzilla

by Gerv

Tuesday March 18th, 2003 12:38 AM

I'm somewhat confused by your list; with the exception of customised statuses and customised resolutions, none of them add any real function; they are internal changes, or they make installation a little bit easier. Hardly showstoppers.

<shrug> Still, as I say below, feel free to post a comment and start working on any of them.

Gerv

#34 Re: Re: Bugzilla

by djm

Monday March 17th, 2003 2:45 PM

> They are an effort to put together, so we usually only do one at release time.

What is the point of that? IMO status updates serve best to describe development _between_ releases.

> Where have you been looking?

At the bugs that interest me: 98304 91037 84876 94534 73665 105856 105854 17453

All have been very quiet in the last 3 months.

#11 News?

by vineet

Sunday March 16th, 2003 8:42 PM

Sorry, I don't see the importance of this news. Doesn't (almost) everyone use bugzilla?

Vineet

#19 Re: News?

by Gerv

Monday March 17th, 2003 12:29 AM

> Doesn't (almost) everyone use bugzilla?

KDE, Gnome, Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Conectiva, Ximian, SGI, IBM, the Linux Kernel, the Apache project, NASA, OpenSSH, xiph, AbiWord, Lyx, Wine...

Yeah, Bugzilla has a fair number of users.

Gerv

#22 Re: Re: News?

by ezh

Monday March 17th, 2003 3:17 AM

OpenOffice (it calls issuezilla)

#41 Re: Re: Re: News?

by Gerv

Tuesday March 18th, 2003 12:34 AM

> OpenOffice (it calls issuezilla)

Don't get me started :-) IssueZilla is a proprietary fork of Bugzilla at around the 2.11 level, and is therefore a pile of pants compared to current Bugzilla. All it does is give us a bad name :-|

Gerv

#23 ...everyone uses bugzilla

by Sander

Monday March 17th, 2003 5:13 AM

And of course Opera: https://bugs.opera.com/bugreport.cgi (more apparent if you look at the source of the page; for example: "Some fields initialized from your user-agent...")

I wonder what bug tracking system is used for IE... ;)

#24 I wonder what bug tracking system is used for IE..

by MarkHB

Monday March 17th, 2003 6:32 AM

From all the evidence I've seen, it must be NUL.

#26 Re: Re: News?

by jesusX

Monday March 17th, 2003 7:58 AM

Nasa uses Bugzilla?

<dark humor> Description: Shuttle blowed up. Expected result: Shouldn't have blowed up.

User comments: Please fix this ASAP! My company with ten thousand users won't use the shuttle till this is fixed!!1!! </dark humor>

#38 Great White North

by schapel

Monday March 17th, 2003 8:45 PM

It's a feature in The Great White North: Bob: That shuttle blowed up good! Doug: That shuttle blowed up *real* good!!!

#27 How is this newsworthy?

by bmlynch

Monday March 17th, 2003 8:10 AM

So a site decides to use bugzilla.. big deal. This is *Mozilla*zine not *Bugzilla*zine. I really don't give a crap about BZ - it's horribly awful to use and not germaine to this site.

#28 Re: How is this newsworthy?

by bzbarsky

Monday March 17th, 2003 10:35 AM

Bugzilla is a Mozilla.org project just as much as, say, Phoenix is. Or Calendar. Or anything else mozilla.org is sorta doing. Should people stop posting about Phoenix too?

("germane", not "germaine")

#32 Re: Re: How is this newsworthy?

by jesusX

Monday March 17th, 2003 2:01 PM

No, it's Jermain! And don't forget Tito!

#35 Re: Re: How is this newsworthy?

by bmlynch

Monday March 17th, 2003 4:31 PM

Yeah, I guess I momentarily forgot that important detail - that BZ is under the Mozilla umbrella. Point taken! :)

Cheers.

#31 Re: How is this newsworthy?

by AlexBishop

Monday March 17th, 2003 11:51 AM

"This is *Mozilla*zine not *Bugzilla*zine."

MozillaZine covers the activities coordinated by mozilla.org. That's Mozilla itself, Phoenix, Camino, Bugzilla, Bonsai etc. Personally, I've always thought that MZ doesn't give enough attention to the Webtools.

Alex