[squeak-dev] Bug fixing (Re: Trunk commits)

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Fri Sep 4 03:09:58 UTC 2009


Ronald Spengler wrote:
> Ron the bug collector says:
> 
> We should still collect bugs, and have a place to put them, while we're 
> studying them, but we shouldn't keep them very long, as they've lots to 
> do, and little time.

I agree. But I will say that I much prefer contributions that go into 
the inbox and for two very simple reasons:

1) They have context. I don't need to worry whether the change conflicts 
with other changes that have happened in the meantime - Monticello takes 
perfectly care of that. Contrary to Mantis where you can find fixes 
filed out from every Squeak version under the sun (just look at the 
preamble of most fileouts) you know the definitive (package) version 
this patch was made against. You also know that whoever posted the fix 
must have had an image that wasn't broken beyond repair; at the very 
least they were able to post it. And you know that at least it has been 
loaded into a Squeak that was reasonably similar to yours (based on 
package version). All of this knowledge about the patch is immensely 
useful for integration.

2) It is an *extremely* efficient workflow. I can fire up Squeak, click 
on the inbox repository, open it. Within three clicks I can see if there 
has any actual code been contributed. It takes a lot more work than that 
to find actual code on Mantis. Then there is loading. I have Monticello 
already open, clicking on the package on "changes" or "merge" allows me 
to review the actual code against the current version within two more 
clicks. Compare this to Mantis where you'd download the fix to the 
directory, open a file list, click on the file, choose "browse changes". 
After loading and verifying the change there is posting it to the trunk. 
Monticello is still open, unless there was a issue or I needed to merge 
I can simply copy the version into the trunk with two more clicks. With 
Mantis, I load the change, then I need to find which packages are 
affected by it, then I need to write change log comments (possibly 
copying them out of the change set preambles etc).

In other words, the integration workflow with Mantis takes me somewhere 
between 10-15 minutes even for trivial fixes, including usages of 
multiple tools that aren't integrated. With Monticello and the inbox the 
same basic process takes me seven clicks. I've never felt anywhere near 
as effective for integrating stuff.

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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