On 07.03.2006, at 19:55, tim Rowledge wrote:

> On the subject of Mantis and who does what with it:
>
> It's great when someone takes the time to report a problem and  
> still better when they include a decent amount of information about  
> the problem, how it happened, what image, what machine, what VM,  
> update level etc. Reading  http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ 
> ~sgtatham/bugs.html is a useful way to spend a moment.
>
> What happens next is..... nothing much, usually. This is a tragedy.  
> All that information waiting to be used to improve our world. Sigh.
>

What I would like to try once would be managing those issues on  
mantis "GTD" style... I suppose everyone on this list knows what GTD  
is... no?
So there are those kinds of books that nobody admits of reading but  
magically they sell a lot: Self Help Books. (I hear a terrified  
scream from the back).
GTD is just one of those books... but it was somwhow good enough to  
get it's own TLA. Now that says something about hacker-compatibility...

The first step to GTD is to take the amorphous blob (Mantis) and  
declare it to be the INBOX. Now let's take every item out of the  
INBOX and ask
one simple Question: "What is the next action?".... and so on. There  
are lots of descriptions of the process on the web (just google for  
GTD to learn more).

It would be interesting to see how this process would work out... the  
main problem with most items in Mantis is that we exactly have not  
defined
what need to happen next. Does it need to be discussed? Routed to a  
Team? put into 3.9a? or 3.8? or both? patched to be able to be added  
to 3.9a?

Hard to say with the current setup. And then all the stuff that I  
can't do anything about, why do I see that? For me, a Graphics bug is  
done as soon as
I have recognized it to be a graphics bugs. i can't do anything. move  
along. Same with network, VM, lots of stuff. There are thigs where  
the issue
needs to be discussed. Others are Projects, we know that they should  
be done, but it will take a huge effort: for bugfixing, there is  
nothing that
can be done. Then there is the general difference between "bugs that  
need to be fixed" and "bugs that are fixed but the fix is not yet in  
the release".
Other issues have a huge discussion, mayeb 5 different changesets,  
some containing tests, some different versions of a fix. What is the  
next action?

It would be nice to filter a true "next actions" list out of that big  
pile of stuff  that we have now on mantis.

Maybe we can start simple: Define "Next action" for each and every  
bug report, just as a comment. That would be a start.

     Marcus