Jeroen Roovers | 4 Jul 01:13

RFC: 0-day bump requests

     Hi fellow developers,

it seems I've run into a minor issue with fellow bug wrangler carlo
(who has been putting a lot of work into that, for which we should all
be grateful).

Carsten has a cut-and-paste message that he posts in comments to
version bump bug reports that he finds have been filed on the day the
software version in question was released/announced. The gist of the
message is that none of or most ebuild developers do not like these
"0-day requests" and that users (and developers) should refrain from
filing them on the same day. Waiting a week would be OK, the message
seems to say.

Being an ebuild developer myself, I have to say that I do not hold that
stance and that I welcome early version bump requests. Therefore, I
refrain from adding such messages to the bugs that I wrangle and indeed
welcome any bump requests[1].

Finding myself in conflict with someone I have come to share a certain
workload with, notably someone who has a few more years of Gentoo
experience, I wonder what the majority of our ebuild developers
actually think. In that spirit, I hope the following questions are
neutral enough for everyone to *not* start a flamewar over this. :)

-----
1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
version bump requests?
(Continue reading)

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 01:16 +0200, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

If it is for software where I am also upstream (Audacious for example),
it does tend to annoy me when people try their utmost to file bug
reports before I commit my ebuild. (I have yet to miss a release by more
then 6 hours)

> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?

For things like the nVidia drivers I do welcome it. The time I can spend
trawling upstream sites for new releases is limited.

Just an idea:
How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests are welcome?
It's more of an individual developer preference, but that seems the right place for it.

Regards,
Tony V.
Joe Peterson | 4 Jul 01:30

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Tony "Chainsaw" Vroon wrote:
> The time I can spend
> trawling upstream sites for new releases is limited.

Same here - I would never mind getting a 0-day bump request, since
someone else might have noticed before I did that a new version is
available.

> Just an idea:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests are welcome?
> It's more of an individual developer preference, but that seems the right place for it.

It might make sense if the default were that 0-day is OK (especially if
most devs don't mind).  If not, then the tag could specifiy the number
of days to wait...

						-Joe
--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Thomas Anderson | 4 Jul 01:52

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 12:26:13AM +0100, Tony Chainsaw Vroon wrote:
> > 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> > version bump requests?
> Just an idea:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests are welcome?
> It's more of an individual developer preference, but that seems the right place for it.
> 
> Regards,
> Tony V.

I think Tony's metadata.xml idea is perhaps the proper way to handle
this issue. 

As for your questions, I like getting bump requests as soon as possible, as I can't check
upstream's website every day or two. One thing to watch out for is
a huge amount duplicates.
Torsten Rehn | 4 Jul 02:08

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Friday 04 July 2008, Tony "Chainsaw" Vroon wrote:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests are
> welcome?

People obviously don't care about what it says on the website, why should they 
start looking into metadata.xml?

I think we should remove the useless restrictions on filing bump requests and 
welcome users to open bugs. Closing (valid) bugs feels good and is also sort 
of a psychological reward for the user who opened the bug, perhaps 
encouraging them to stay in direct contact with Gentoo and contribute other, 
less trivial work.

--

-- 
Torsten Rehn <scel <at> xdap.org>
Gentoo AMD64 Arch Tester
http://scel.info
Duncan | 4 Jul 02:35

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

"Tony \"Chainsaw\" Vroon" <chainsaw <at> gentoo.org> posted
1215127573.4067.7.camel <at> localhost, excerpted below, on  Fri, 04 Jul 2008
00:26:13 +0100:

>> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
>> version bump requests?

AFAIK, it has been at least informal policy to discourage bump requests 
for the first week or two.  After that, it's fair game, but of course 
check for dups b4 filing.

> Just an idea:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests
> are welcome? It's more of an individual developer preference, but that
> seems the right place for it.

While I like the /idea/ of a metadata tag, all in all, I think a blanket 
policy remains best (read least confusing).  Make it 72 hours or a week 
or whatever.  Devs who know and prefer not to be bothered after that can 
file their own bug, thus letting people know /they/ know, and giving 
people a place to CC for updates.

BTW, is there a supported and easily user usable metadata viewer.  
Something at the level of gentoolkit?  I've not seen or read of such a 
thing, which indicates it's likely pretty obscure if so.  What good would 
a metadata tag do if it's not info exposed to the users?  Practically, 
that's just more confusing.

--

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
(Continue reading)

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Hi,

"Tony \"Chainsaw\" Vroon" <chainsaw <at> gentoo.org>:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump
> requests are welcome? It's more of an individual developer
> preference, but that seems the right place for it.

 This fixes a non-problem.  Why overload metadata.xml with information
that will rot there probably, because nobody thinks of it?  There is
only very few 0-day bump-requests, so just leave them until you fix
it.  I am not annoyed by it and having some policy like "Only allow
them when the relative moon humidity is below 0.434" will irritate
bug filers, as they won't check and it burdens
bug-wranglers if they have to check before.

V-Li

--

-- 
Christian Faulhammer, Gentoo Lisp project
<URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode

<URL:http://www.faulhammer.org/>
Jeroen Roovers | 4 Jul 19:12

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:26:13 +0100
"Tony \"Chainsaw\" Vroon" <chainsaw <at> gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 01:16 +0200, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> > 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?
> 
> If it is for software where I am also upstream (Audacious for
> example), it does tend to annoy me when people try their utmost to
> file bug reports before I commit my ebuild. (I have yet to miss a
> release by more then 6 hours)
> 
> > 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> > version bump requests?
> 
> For things like the nVidia drivers I do welcome it. The time I can
> spend trawling upstream sites for new releases is limited.
> 
> Just an idea:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump
> requests are welcome? It's more of an individual developer
> preference, but that seems the right place for it.

Its' half an idea, in my opinion. We need a process, not just a tag in a
file. The tag in the file would tell us how a bug should perhaps be
treated, and metadata.xml is an excellent place to concentrate such
information, but to tell a bug wrangler (or anyone else) to "do nothing
for X units of time" isn't going to work. As for what the tag might
tell us, I think leaving bugs on hold for a few days is not the right
approach - users (as well as, say, fellow developers and upstreams)
shouldn't have to "artificially" wait to make their release
(Continue reading)

Robin H. Johnson | 4 Jul 20:30

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 12:26:13AM +0100, Tony Chainsaw Vroon wrote:
> Just an idea:
> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests are welcome?
> It's more of an individual developer preference, but that seems the right place for it.
If used, what about including and reviving the project that scraped
Freshmeat and other spots looking for new releases automatically?

--

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy
E-Mail     : robbat2 <at> gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85
Tiziano Müller | 4 Jul 22:05

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Robin H. Johnson wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 12:26:13AM +0100, Tony Chainsaw Vroon wrote:
>> Just an idea:
>> How about a metadata.xml tag that indicates whether early bump requests
>> are welcome? It's more of an individual developer preference, but that
>> seems the right place for it.
> If used, what about including and reviving the project that scraped
> Freshmeat and other spots looking for new releases automatically?
> 
-> GLEP 46, already approved. Need XSD to implement it properly (see my
other comment on).

--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Marius Mauch | 4 Jul 02:31

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 01:16:09 +0200
Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:

Disclaimer: I'm not really a package maintainer anymore.

> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

I guess like with most people it depends 
a) If I'm already aware of the new version, or would have noticed it
myself very soon I'd get a bit annoyed by them
b) How the request is worded. Is it a demand "$foo has been released 5
minutes ago, why isn't it in the tree yet?!?"), or just a friendly
notification, possibly including helpful hints about changes (new deps
or configure options for example).
c) The nature of the release. If the release is "important" (e.g.
because it contains fixes for security or data corruption issues, or
problems affecting many users) then I'm more likely to appreciate an
early notification.

> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?

Not in general, only if they are worded in some way offensive or don't
contain useful information. But that applies to almost any bug report.

Marius
--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

(Continue reading)

Hans de Graaff | 4 Jul 07:07

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 02:31 +0200, Marius Mauch wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 01:16:09 +0200
> Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm not really a package maintainer anymore.

I am, and Marius said all the things that I would have said. :-)

One of the reasons that it depends is also that my own involvement which
packages varies. Some things I track closely including involvement with
upstream, and then a 0-day bump can be a bit annoying since I'm already
quite aware of the bump. Other packages I've only taken up because
otherwise they would be without any maintainer, and I may only check
them every 6 months or so. Getting any bump request for them (0-day or
otherwise) is useful.

I also thought that the idea behind discouragement of 0-day bump
requests was to keep bugzilla a bit more uncluttered with bugs that
should normally be closed in a very short time anyway.

Kind regards,

Hans

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Le vendredi 04 juillet 2008 à 07:07 +0200, Hans de Graaff a écrit :
> On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 02:31 +0200, Marius Mauch wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 01:16:09 +0200
> > Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Disclaimer: I'm not really a package maintainer anymore.
> 
> I am, and Marius said all the things that I would have said. :-)
> 
> One of the reasons that it depends is also that my own involvement which
> packages varies. Some things I track closely including involvement with
> upstream, and then a 0-day bump can be a bit annoying since I'm already
> quite aware of the bump. Other packages I've only taken up because
> otherwise they would be without any maintainer, and I may only check
> them every 6 months or so. Getting any bump request for them (0-day or
> otherwise) is useful.

I'm 100% seconding that. We, the gnome guys, have at least 2 ways of
being notified of package updates (RSS & mailing-list). So for most of
the packages we manage, a 0-day bump request is annoying ("yes we know,
but we haven't had time to get to it, so please don't bother us..."). If
we aren't done one week later, then it's probably that we missed it on
our radar or we haven't had enough man power at this time. In either
case it's fine to fill a bug at this time.

--

-- 
Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva <at> gentoo.org>
Gentoo
Matti Bickel | 11 Jul 00:38

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Hans de Graaff <graaff <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 02:31 +0200, Marius Mauch wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 01:16:09 +0200
> > Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Disclaimer: I'm not really a package maintainer anymore.
> 
> I am, and Marius said all the things that I would have said. :-)

AOL here. For the few packages i maintain, i'm on all relevant channels
to be notified of updates in time. But i appreciate user feedback on
bumps, for most of the time they come with patches or complete ebuilds.
(thanks guys, you're fantastic)

I certainly want to stress the "wording" part of marius' mail.
The bump request i dealt with are "patch attached" kind of stuff. That's
not annoying, that shows the user's caring and i appreciate that very
much. Especially if the bump is critical i like timely feedback on it,
in a "hey, this has been out for some days, fixes issue X, which is
kind of important to me, could we have a bump in the tree?" kind of way.

I DO get annoyed by "package X has a bugfix release out 5 hours now, why
isn't it in the tree yet!!?" - but i don't get those bump requests...
--

-- 
Regards, Matti Bickel
Signed/Encrypted email preferred (key 4849EC6C)

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests


Jeroen Roovers wrote:
| -----
| 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?
|
|

It's generally fine with me; though I would handle it differently
depending upon the situation.

For example, sometimes these version bumps require some researching or
testing for some fix or feature, and I really like to test or check out
that first by myself, in such a cases, it could take a while for me to
version bump and I also try to keep the user informed about it through
the bug report (it has worked fine for me so far). If it is a straight
bump with minimal changes, I could take care of it immediately , in
either cases, I don't care the user filing an early request ... as long
as they don't care how long it might take for me to get it into portage :-)

| 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
| version bump requests?
|

No. It's fine with me.

| -----
|
| I know, it's not a particularly good survey, but I hope the plenty and
| diversity of your answers will shed more light on the matter. :)
|
(Continue reading)

Sven Köhler | 4 Jul 03:58

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

I'd like to add a few words from the users perspective:

> -----
> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

I hope developers are not annoyed - well, sometimes the words chosen are 
maybe a bit too offensive.

I like these bump requests. I add myself as a CC and wait for some email 
in my inbox saying "it's in the tree" like most devs like to express it.
Unfortunatly, i still have to wait half on hour, until the ebuild is 
available in the mirrors.

Here's my little theory why there are these 0-day bump requests:

Gentoo Maintainers seem to be very different. There are packages (opera 
for example) where we're offered the latest of the latest (even betas 
and pre-releases and stuff), and new versions are in portage before 
you've read the news on your favourite news-site.
And on the other hand, there are packages like filezilla (to just name 
an example) where it took ages to get a new version. In addition, 
filezilla is one of the softwares that shouts at you: "there is a new 
version of me available. get it now!"
And on the third hand (damn, humans only have two) there are important 
releases like pidgin 2.4.3 which has fixed the ICQ login issue. You saw 
the bump-request coming, didn't you?

> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?
> -----
(Continue reading)

Petteri Räty | 4 Jul 09:39

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
> 
> -----
> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?
> 

I don't mind as I don't have the time to follow upstreams that closely 
for the hundreds of Java packages out there.

> 
> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?
> 

I think the best approach is to discourage them from filing the bump 
requests in before a week or so has passed but assign the bug to the 
maintainer. Closing it has the problem that I doubt most users remember 
to check for closed bugs when filing bump requests so this will lead to 
more bump requests bugs being filed on the same version.

Regards,
Petter

Ferris McCormick | 4 Jul 10:13

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 01:16:09 +0200
Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:

>      Hi fellow developers,
> 
> 
> it seems I've run into a minor issue with fellow bug wrangler carlo
> (who has been putting a lot of work into that, for which we should all
> be grateful).
> 
> Carsten has a cut-and-paste message that he posts in comments to
> version bump bug reports that he finds have been filed on the day the
> software version in question was released/announced. The gist of the
> message is that none of or most ebuild developers do not like these
> "0-day requests" and that users (and developers) should refrain from
> filing them on the same day. Waiting a week would be OK, the message
> seems to say.
> 
> Being an ebuild developer myself, I have to say that I do not hold that
> stance and that I welcome early version bump requests. Therefore, I
> refrain from adding such messages to the bugs that I wrangle and indeed
> welcome any bump requests[1].
> 
> Finding myself in conflict with someone I have come to share a certain
> workload with, notably someone who has a few more years of Gentoo
> experience, I wonder what the majority of our ebuild developers
> actually think. In that spirit, I hope the following questions are
(Continue reading)

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests


Jeroen Roovers wrote:
>      Hi fellow developers,
> 
> 
> it seems I've run into a minor issue with fellow bug wrangler carlo
> (who has been putting a lot of work into that, for which we should all
> be grateful).
> 
> Carsten has a cut-and-paste message that he posts in comments to
> version bump bug reports that he finds have been filed on the day the
> software version in question was released/announced. The gist of the
> message is that none of or most ebuild developers do not like these
> "0-day requests" and that users (and developers) should refrain from
> filing them on the same day. Waiting a week would be OK, the message
> seems to say.
> 
> Being an ebuild developer myself, I have to say that I do not hold that
> stance and that I welcome early version bump requests. Therefore, I
> refrain from adding such messages to the bugs that I wrangle and indeed
> welcome any bump requests[1].
> 
> Finding myself in conflict with someone I have come to share a certain
> workload with, notably someone who has a few more years of Gentoo
> experience, I wonder what the majority of our ebuild developers
> actually think. In that spirit, I hope the following questions are
> neutral enough for everyone to *not* start a flamewar over this. :)
> 
> 
> -----
(Continue reading)

Luca Barbato | 4 Jul 15:42

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

They are useful as reminder.

> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?

I won't prevent anybody to send them, but I can understand why people 
would rather like to have less bugs in their mailbox.

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato
Gentoo Council Member
Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Jim Ramsay | 7 Jul 16:10

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Jeroen Roovers <jer <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> 1) How do you feel when you receive an early version bump request?

I think any version bump request at any time is worthwhile.  The earlier
the better!

> 2) If you had your way, would you discourage users from filing early
> version bump requests?

No.  And I honestly don't understand other devs' reluctance for 0-day
bug requests.  Maybe I just don't have enough packages to be annoyed by
the bug-spam, or maybe I'm just too lazy to check upstream's sites all
day long, but I like to know that people are excited about the packages
I maintain.

Here's an interesting solution for those who find it annoying though:
Just file your own 0-day bump request in bugzilla. In theory some users
would find this and just CC themselves on it. Other users could be
shushed with the shame of the DUPLICATE. Everyone wins!

If someone had huge amounts of time, having a special bugzilla
interface to show current, pending, and requested versions of each
package (Sort of like an interactive packages.g.o?) may be a neat
project... maybe next year's GSOC?

P.S. Sorry about the lateness of the post - My ISP's comcastic smtp
server decided it wasn't going to work all weekend long.

--

-- 
Jim Ramsay
(Continue reading)

Duncan | 7 Jul 17:33

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Jim Ramsay <lack <at> gentoo.org> posted 20080707101014.5b94a020 <at> vrm378-02,
excerpted below, on  Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:10:14 -0400:

> Here's an interesting solution for those who find it annoying though:
> Just file your own 0-day bump request in bugzilla. In theory some users
> would find this and just CC themselves on it. Other users could be
> shushed with the shame of the DUPLICATE. Everyone wins!

++

Interested users find the bug and know you are on it, and (as you said) 
can CC themselves for further updates.  Users who don't look get the hint 
of a DUP to nudge them to check before filing next time.

As you said, everyone wins!

(As I posted earlier, I really don't mind a 3-day or 1 week hold-off, 
either.  If devs want it... <shrug>.  But I really don't see the big deal 
either way, and this way does have the advantages listed above.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Steev Klimaszewski | 7 Jul 20:11

Re: Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 15:33 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> Jim Ramsay <lack <at> gentoo.org> posted 20080707101014.5b94a020 <at> vrm378-02,
> excerpted below, on  Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:10:14 -0400:
> 
> > Here's an interesting solution for those who find it annoying though:
> > Just file your own 0-day bump request in bugzilla. In theory some users
> > would find this and just CC themselves on it. Other users could be
> > shushed with the shame of the DUPLICATE. Everyone wins!
Just picking a random one to reply to...

As stated by the gnome herd - most of them are on the mailing lists, and
for packages that I maintain, I tend to be on upstreams mailing list as
well.  While for the most part, 0day don't extremely bother me, the
deluge of mail can be overwhelming at times (even using filters) 47
mailing lists including seperate folders for bugs that are specific to
me, my herds, and other herds I am interested in, and playing catch up
to all of that after 12 hours of work can get troublesome.  Occasionally
though, there are the packages that I have that don't have a mailing
list, and its nice to know that there are users out there that actually
a) use them and b) know that there is a bump before I do.

So, really, if upstream has a mailing list/announces a 0 day is
unwarranted, if not, then by all means please do.  

--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Ryan Hill | 8 Jul 01:05

Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 10:10:14 -0400
Jim Ramsay <lack <at> gentoo.org> wrote:

> Here's an interesting solution for those who find it annoying though:
> Just file your own 0-day bump request in bugzilla. In theory some
> users would find this and just CC themselves on it. Other users could
> be shushed with the shame of the DUPLICATE. Everyone wins!

I try to do this whenever there's some reason why I can't add a package
right away.

I also don't see the point of yelling at someone for trying to help in
whatever way they can, even if that's in the form of a poke when a new
version is released.

--

-- 
gcc-porting,                                      by design, by neglect
treecleaner,                              for a fact or just for effect
wxwidgets @ gentoo     EFFD 380E 047A 4B51 D2BD C64F 8AA8 8346 F9A4 0662
Jim Ramsay | 8 Jul 15:19

Re: Re: RFC: 0-day bump requests

Ryan Hill <dirtyepic <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 10:10:14 -0400
> Jim Ramsay <lack <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Here's an interesting solution for those who find it annoying
> > though: Just file your own 0-day bump request in bugzilla. In
> > theory some users would find this and just CC themselves on it.
> > Other users could be shushed with the shame of the DUPLICATE.
> > Everyone wins!
> 
> I try to do this whenever there's some reason why I can't add a
> package right away.
> 
> I also don't see the point of yelling at someone for trying to help in
> whatever way they can, even if that's in the form of a poke when a new
> version is released.

I wonder if a special "Version Bump" template for bugzilla could be a
useful thing to make this easier for both users and devs?

--

-- 
Jim Ramsay
Gentoo Developer (rox/fluxbox/gkrellm)

Gmane