Live data from Hacker News

Gnome has moved to GitLab

about.gitlab.com

201–210 of 212 posts

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#201

… and closed about a bazillion bugs I filed over the years in the process without (apparently) migrating them, too. … though I am pretty sure they left the bugs in the source intact.

Everyone on the CC list for each bugzilla bug was notified 6 months ago that any bug without action in over a year would be frozen instead of migrated. (Do keep in mind that GNOME, unlike corporate projects, is largely volunteer based and time, resources, and contributors are limited) As the email said, you just needed to ACK a comment on the bug to keep it alive and ensure its migration. Given the nearly 900,000 bug…

> (Do keep in mind that GNOME, unlike corporate projects, is largely volunteer based and time, resources, and contributors are limited)

All the more reason not to undo the work of its contributors.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was that simple, but I never received a single notice of the migration or my need to do anything at all as a bug reporter. (Just ran a liberal grep on my inbox right now.) The only notice I received was after-the-fact. Sorry. Learning of GNOME'S cavalier attitude toward user reports and eventual product direction was exactly why I moved off the platform in the intervening years. I had high hopes when I was…

Bug reporters who can't even be arsed to follow up or check in on their reports aren't worth nearly as much as you seem to think they are.

Why would you "check in" in the presence of e-mail notifications of new developments? Most projects also don't like it if you post "bug still exists" every few months.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was that simple, but I never received a single notice of the migration or my need to do anything at all as a bug reporter. (Just ran a liberal grep on my inbox right now.) The only notice I received was after-the-fact. Sorry. Learning of GNOME'S cavalier attitude toward user reports and eventual product direction was exactly why I moved off the platform in the intervening years. I had high hopes when I was…

Bug reporters who can't even be arsed to follow up or check in on their reports aren't worth nearly as much as you seem to think they are.

[deleted]

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the relationship between the existence of a bug in the codebase and the propensity of the bug reporter to respond to an email? It's not clear to me the question here, can you be more specific? Many bugs filed are not necessarily bugs in the codebase. I do wish we treated bugs and user support separately. I rather prefer the terseness of an engineering journal for what it is, but that tends to anger those exp…

> It's not clear to me the question here, can you be more specific? Many bugs filed are not necessarily bugs in the codebase. Right. So your goal is to separate reports about bona fide bugs in the codebase from reports that either a) are no longer bugs in the codebase or b) are issues outside the scope of the codebase. That's a laudable goal. Filtering out years of bugs based on the lack of timely response from a sub…

I know that I for one steer people away from projects where serious bugs go unfixed for a long time. I have very little incentive to follow up on them once I’ve switched tools.

The correlation between bugs that matter a great deal to me and bugs I don’t respond to is much greater than zero.

If you delete all the bugs that caused people to abandon your platform then you are cutting off your own nose.

Can’t reproduce is a better metric but only if it’s other users rather than the maintainers. I find that a lot of people who write buggy code also are bad at reproducing issues (which I think is why they have bugs in the first place. Lack of imagination or rigor or both).

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#205
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bug reporters who can't even be arsed to follow up or check in on their reports aren't worth nearly as much as you seem to think they are.

Why would you "check in" in the presence of e-mail notifications of new developments? Most projects also don't like it if you post "bug still exists" every few months.

Reading email notifications would count as checking in, I don't know why you assumed otherwise.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bug reporters who can't even be arsed to follow up or check in on their reports aren't worth nearly as much as you seem to think they are.

True, but on the other hand bugs can go unfixed for years, with developers ignoring them or prioritizing them super ultra low. I know I've opened enough bug reports over the years that I can't go back and check on all of them, but I'm still hoping they'll get fixed some day. If it's closed for "inactivity" while I'm actively waiting for a response from the developer, that's going to annoy me.

What exactly do you mean by "actively waiting"? Is your act of waiting actively in any way perceivable to anyone but yourself?

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link for Jwz's cadt post https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html (edit: I didn't see it was already posted below)

Quick reminder: JWZ despises HN, so you'll need to copy-paste that link in order to remove the referrer header.

Is there a blog post or something that kind of gives an overview on why JWZ hates HN? I'm really curious to learn about the animosity.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#208
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you "check in" in the presence of e-mail notifications of new developments? Most projects also don't like it if you post "bug still exists" every few months.

Reading email notifications would count as checking in, I don't know why you assumed otherwise.

The parent explicitly mentioned that they did not get the e-mail notification they were supposed to get, suggesting they were subscribed to the issues. So if waiting for e-mail counts your criticism doesn't seem to apply.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do wish we treated bugs and user support separately. Why not have a buck tracking system where only contributors have write access and a second system where users can submit their reports?

I oppose this sort of thing and rather encourage forming a strong QA team to separate the fluff from the real deal.

The problem is that apparently they don't have this team.

In the face of that reality, a separated internal and external bug trabkin system might be a viable solution.

Re: Gnome has moved to GitLab

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but on the other hand bugs can go unfixed for years, with developers ignoring them or prioritizing them super ultra low. I know I've opened enough bug reports over the years that I can't go back and check on all of them, but I'm still hoping they'll get fixed some day. If it's closed for "inactivity" while I'm actively waiting for a response from the developer, that's going to annoy me.

What exactly do you mean by "actively waiting"? Is your act of waiting actively in any way perceivable to anyone but yourself?

As opposed to having forgotten about it. As in, if the developer responded, Github would send me an email and I would jump back into the conversation. As in I can't do anything more until the developer responds, but once they do I'm ready to help.

There's a quick and easy way to tell if someone is actively waiting: respond to them.

Post reply on HN