[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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