What do you want me to do?
Here are the major things I do for the PostgreSQL project. Are there
some items I should be doing more/less of?
o Patches
o TODO/FAQ
o Email discussion, coordination
o Win32
o Talks
o Books/articles
o Web site cleanup
o Source code cleanup
o Features/fixes
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 12:16:23PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Here are the major things I do for the PostgreSQL project. Are there
some items I should be doing more/less of?o Patches
o TODO/FAQ
o Email discussion, coordination
o Win32
o Talks
o Books/articles
o Web site cleanup
o Source code cleanup
o Features/fixes
I'd say stay away from web site and source code clean up; there are
already people working on those, or are very good areas for new
developers to start knowing the code. Keeping the TODO up to date
probably is a very important tool for coordinating the "janitorial
work." I remember thinking, when somebody proposed using the
bugtracking system, that other projects need it (bugtracking) because
they don't have a Bruce Momjian to do it for them.
Applying patches, mantaining the TODO and FAQ and coordinating things
are, AFAICS, part of your "historical" duties, so while they could
certainly be handled by someone else, it may be best for you to keep on
it.
You should really keep on your talks and courses. Given that teaching
is part of your professional career, you are probably the best qualified
person to do it.
I don't know much about articles, but if you can put some work on
updating your book it would be really cool.
I don't have an opinion on the Win32 issue.
--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"No renuncies a nada. No te aferres a nada."
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Here are the major things I do for the PostgreSQL project. Are there
some items I should be doing more/less of?o Patches
o TODO/FAQ
o Email discussion, coordination
o Win32
o Talks
o Books/articles
o Web site cleanup
o Source code cleanup
o Features/fixes
o Spend time with the Family? :)
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
I don't have an opinion on the Win32 issue.
I do :-)
I think the most important thing for Win32 is for you to set the
direction somewhat (i.e. in more detail than is on your win32 page) and
then jump on Joshua's offer of a dedicated developer (possibly two) to
work on it for 320 hours.
cheers
andrew
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Here are the major things I do for the PostgreSQL project. Are there
some items I should be doing more/less of?o Patches
o TODO/FAQ
o Email discussion, coordination
o Win32
o Talks
o Books/articles
o Web site cleanup
o Source code cleanup
o Features/fixeso Spend time with the Family? :)
Actually, work on the house was a big item the past few weeks. I moved
into a new house a year ago but hadn't made much progress on my house
todo list in the previous six months, so I worked on that for a while.
The worst was my upstairs hallway that had no light fixtures, so late at
night if no other lights were on in the house, you had to walk down the
hallway with your hands out in front of you so you didn't bump into
anything. We had a nightlight in the hallway, but that didn't help
much.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian writes:
o TODO/FAQ
The FAQ might as well be maintained just like the rest of the
documentation, i.e., by the development group as a whole.
The TODO list could be replaced by a kind of bug-tracking system with
developer write access only, so developers could keep their private notes
lists in public, add comments on why things are difficult, if the
perspective changes, etc. I have the feeling that key developers for the
most part ignore the TODO list and keep their private set of notes.
--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Here are the major things I do for the PostgreSQL project. Are there
some items I should be doing more/less of?o Patches
o TODO/FAQ
o Email discussion, coordination
o Win32
o Talks
o Books/articles
o Web site cleanup
o Source code cleanup
o Features/fixeso Spend time with the Family? :)
Actually, work on the house was a big item the past few weeks. I moved
into a new house a year ago but hadn't made much progress on my house
todo list in the previous six months, so I worked on that for a while.The worst was my upstairs hallway that had no light fixtures, so late at
night if no other lights were on in the house, you had to walk down the
hallway with your hands out in front of you so you didn't bump into
anything. We had a nightlight in the hallway, but that didn't help
much.
Nightgoogles? :)
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
Bruce Momjian writes:
o TODO/FAQ
The FAQ might as well be maintained just like the rest of the
documentation, i.e., by the development group as a whole.
I encourage others to commit to the FAQ.html file in CVS. The only
unique thing I do is to generate the flat file in /docs, and that can be
done at release time.
The TODO list could be replaced by a kind of bug-tracking system with
developer write access only, so developers could keep their private notes
lists in public, add comments on why things are difficult, if the
perspective changes, etc. I have the feeling that key developers for the
most part ignore the TODO list and keep their private set of notes.
The only unique thing I do there is to generate an HTML and throw it on
the web site; again, others are encouraged to update it. I do like
having a file that is small enough to be readable in a short time, but
the right bug-tracking system could do that.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) writes:
The worst was my upstairs hallway that had no light fixtures, so late at
night if no other lights were on in the house, you had to walk down the
hallway with your hands out in front of you so you didn't bump into
anything. We had a nightlight in the hallway, but that didn't help
much.
Here's the solution:
<http://www.nightvis.com/site/hm/pvs5/default.asp>
Excalibur's Dual Tube Goggle Systems are precision-manufactured
night vision devices which provide near-daylight operational
capabilities at night. A built-in Infrared Light Emitting Diode (IR
LED) provides on-call covert illumination for close-up work in
totally dark areas. In addition, the dual tube configuration
improves reliability and aids in the physical coordination of tasks,
such as traversing uneven terrain, or performing complicated tasks
by hand.
--
output = reverse("ofni.smrytrebil" "@" "enworbbc")
<http://dev6.int.libertyrms.com/>
Christopher Browne
(416) 646 3304 x124 (land)
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 14:00, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
Bruce Momjian writes:
o TODO/FAQ
The FAQ might as well be maintained just like the rest of the
documentation, i.e., by the development group as a whole.I encourage others to commit to the FAQ.html file in CVS. The only
unique thing I do is to generate the flat file in /docs, and that can be
done at release time.The TODO list could be replaced by a kind of bug-tracking system with
developer write access only, so developers could keep their private notes
lists in public, add comments on why things are difficult, if the
perspective changes, etc. I have the feeling that key developers for the
most part ignore the TODO list and keep their private set of notes.The only unique thing I do there is to generate an HTML and throw it on
the web site; again, others are encouraged to update it. I do like
having a file that is small enough to be readable in a short time, but
the right bug-tracking system could do that.
I know most people have talked about using bugzilla, but is anyone
familiar with GNATS? I'm currently rereading Open Sources and there's a
paragraph or two mentioning it's use and the fact that it can be
interfaced with completely by email.
Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Robert Treat wrote:
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 14:00, Bruce Momjian wrote:
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
Bruce Momjian writes:
o TODO/FAQ
The FAQ might as well be maintained just like the rest of the
documentation, i.e., by the development group as a whole.I encourage others to commit to the FAQ.html file in CVS. The only
unique thing I do is to generate the flat file in /docs, and that can be
done at release time.The TODO list could be replaced by a kind of bug-tracking system with
developer write access only, so developers could keep their private notes
lists in public, add comments on why things are difficult, if the
perspective changes, etc. I have the feeling that key developers for the
most part ignore the TODO list and keep their private set of notes.The only unique thing I do there is to generate an HTML and throw it on
the web site; again, others are encouraged to update it. I do like
having a file that is small enough to be readable in a short time, but
the right bug-tracking system could do that.I know most people have talked about using bugzilla, but is anyone
familiar with GNATS? I'm currently rereading Open Sources and there's a
paragraph or two mentioning it's use and the fact that it can be
interfaced with completely by email.
FreeBSD uses it almost exclusively and it supports email interaction with
the database, but I don't think there are very many good GUI front ends
for it (or, at least, not that I've seen) ...
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Robert Treat wrote:
I know most people have talked about using bugzilla, but is anyone
familiar with GNATS? I'm currently rereading Open Sources and there's a
paragraph or two mentioning it's use and the fact that it can be
interfaced with completely by email.FreeBSD uses it almost exclusively and it supports email interaction with
the database, but I don't think there are very many good GUI front ends
for it (or, at least, not that I've seen) ...
No.
A few other thoughts:
. the Samba team have apparently abandoned their own tool and moved to
bugzilla
. if we used bugzilla this might give some impetus to the bugzilla
team's efforts to provide pg as a backend (maybe we could help with that)
. it would seem slightly strange to me for an RDBMS project to use a bug
tracking system that was not RDBMS-backed
. developers are far more likely to be familiar with bugzilla
. are there any active developers without web access? If not, why is
pure email interaction important?
Bugzilla is far from perfect. But it's getting better.
cheers
andrew
Christopher Browne wrote:
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) writes:
The worst was my upstairs hallway that had no light fixtures, so late at
night if no other lights were on in the house, you had to walk down the
hallway with your hands out in front of you so you didn't bump into
anything. We had a nightlight in the hallway, but that didn't help
much.Here's the solution:
<http://www.nightvis.com/site/hm/pvs5/default.asp>Excalibur's Dual Tube Goggle Systems are precision-manufactured
night vision devices which provide near-daylight operational
capabilities at night. A built-in Infrared Light Emitting Diode (IR
LED) provides on-call covert illumination for close-up work in
totally dark areas. In addition, the dual tube configuration
improves reliability and aids in the physical coordination of tasks,
such as traversing uneven terrain, or performing complicated tasks
by hand.
Or the low-tech solution: don't go upstairs late at night ...
Christopher Browne wrote:
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) writes:
The worst was my upstairs hallway that had no light fixtures, so late at
night if no other lights were on in the house, you had to walk down the
hallway with your hands out in front of you so you didn't bump into
anything. We had a nightlight in the hallway, but that didn't help
much.Here's the solution:
<http://www.nightvis.com/site/hm/pvs5/default.asp>Excalibur's Dual Tube Goggle Systems are precision-manufactured
night vision devices which provide near-daylight operational
capabilities at night. A built-in Infrared Light Emitting Diode (IR
LED) provides on-call covert illumination for close-up work in
totally dark areas. In addition, the dual tube configuration
improves reliability and aids in the physical coordination of tasks,
such as traversing uneven terrain, or performing complicated tasks
by hand.
Now that I think of it, I think my wife removed the night light because
she didn't like the light coming into our bedroom, and that's were
things really got dark.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
Bugzilla is far from perfect. But it's getting better.
FWIW, I would like to try a bugzilla-based tracking system for Postgres.
Our last attempt at a tracking system failed miserably, but I think that
was (a) because the software we tried was really unpolished, and (b)
because we let anybody and his pet chihuahua enter bug reports, so the
signal-to-noise ratio went to zero in no time. As long as we can
restrict data entry to people who know what they're doing (not
necessarily developers, but people who know PG well enough to tell bug
from user error), I think it could work, and would beat the heck out of
the way we do things now.
. if we used bugzilla this might give some impetus to the bugzilla
team's efforts to provide pg as a backend (maybe we could help with that)
Red Hat has been using a PG-based version of bugzilla for some time.
I'm not sure what the holdup is in getting that work merged back
upstream, but I'd sure like to see it happen. Anyway we could start
with using their version, rather than suffer the ignominy of using That
Other Database to track our own bug reports ;-)
. are there any active developers without web access? If not, why is
pure email interaction important?
Bugzilla already does email output (ie, notify you of changes to bug
entries you're interested in) well enough. We thought during the last
go-round that it was important to have email input so we could allow
mail to pgsql-bugs to go directly into the tracking system, but in
hindsight that was a really bad idea. What we could use instead is for
someone knowledgeable to commit to transferring *valid* emailed bug
reports into the tracking system. Bruce could do that if he wants, but
there are surely dozens of other people who would be qualified to handle
this task.
Actually, whatever software we pick to run the tracking system,
my guess is that the experiment will not stand or fall on the software.
What we need for success is one or two people who will take
responsibility for housekeeping: putting in valid reports, spotting
duplicate reports and doing the right cleanup, etc. Do we have any
volunteers for that sort of thing?
regards, tom lane
Andrew Dunstan wrote:
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
I don't have an opinion on the Win32 issue.
I do :-)
I think the most important thing for Win32 is for you to set the
direction somewhat (i.e. in more detail than is on your win32 page) and
then jump on Joshua's offer of a dedicated developer (possibly two) to
work on it for 320 hours.
I am on it! I will talk to Joshua's guys every day if I can. I am going
over the emails now that need attention.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 23:07, Tom Lane wrote:
FWIW, I would like to try a bugzilla-based tracking system for Postgres.
Red Hat has been using a PG-based version of bugzilla for some time.
I'm not sure what the holdup is in getting that work merged back
upstream, but I'd sure like to see it happen.
Actually, the porting of Bugzilla to PostgreSQL has been under
development for some time. Or, to put it more precisely, it's an effort
to clean up the code from any MySQL-ism in order to run on different
databases.
Bug #98304 dedicated to PostgreSQL has been unfortunately opened for a
long time, you can see the discussion at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98304
and the target release is the upcoming 2.18 - but targets have been
delayed before. I haven't checked recently if anything works right now.
Red Hat's port is more of a "hack" applied to a specific version of
Bugzilla. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98304#c57
IMHO it would be a good idea to help the Bugzilla team to finish the
port in time for release 2.18 and join a very active tool.
--
Alessio Bragadini <alessio@albourne.com>
APL Financial Services (Overseas) Ltd
. if we used bugzilla this might give some impetus to the bugzilla team's
efforts to provide pg as a backend (maybe we could help with that)
I would actually suggest trying RT. It's not primarily a bug tracking system
and there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between a trouble ticketing system
and a bug tracking system. But there would be a few advantages.
RT has a big non-open-source-developer user-base. There are a lot of big
businesses using it for enterprise-class trouble-ticketing. Currently it
supports Postgres for a backend but a lot of the queries perform terribly.
The combination means Postgres makes a lot of bad impressions. There are
continually threads on the RT mailing lists about how to migrate an RT
installation to MySQL because Postgres isn't scaling up enough and MySQL
performs better. And these people aren't wrong, it does for RT because the
queries were originally written for MySQL.
If postgres ran RT these queries would probably get cleaned up rapidly. And
with optimized queries Postgres would undoubtedly scale better than MySQL to
large installations.
. are there any active developers without web access? If not, why is pure
email interaction important?
Because web-only access to bug reports is a sure way to get them ignored.
You're depending on developers periodically checking some web page. I can
barely remember to check slashdot and news.google.com once a day, nevermind
the 50 bug pages for the various projects I'm subscribed to mailing lists for.
In any case both bugzilla and RT support mail notifications with the full
content of the changes, so that's pretty irrelevant. I think RT has more mail
integration because it's often used for trouble ticketing systems where e-mail
is the only published interface, but I'm not sure.
PS:
Another option is the Debian bug tracking system, which was rewritten recently
and is pretty neat. It's 100% mail driven with web pages to do various
searches and display bugs.
--
greg
On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 04:07:46PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
Actually, whatever software we pick to run the tracking system,
my guess is that the experiment will not stand or fall on the software.
What we need for success is one or two people who will take
responsibility for housekeeping: putting in valid reports, spotting
duplicate reports and doing the right cleanup, etc. Do we have any
volunteers for that sort of thing?
What kind of volunteers do you want? Do you want first-level people
who will filter most of the reports for noise, &c., before you get to
trusty developers, or do you want one or two people who really know
the code to take the reports and either file them in the bug tracking
system or in the round bin?
I've seen projects succeed both ways, and that's why I'm asking.
A
--
----
Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street
Afilias Canada Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info> M2P 2A8
+1 416 646 3304 x110Tom Lane wrote:
Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
Bugzilla is far from perfect. But it's getting better.
FWIW, I would like to try a bugzilla-based tracking system for Postgres.
Our last attempt at a tracking system failed miserably, but I think that
was (a) because the software we tried was really unpolished, and (b)
because we let anybody and his pet chihuahua enter bug reports, so the
signal-to-noise ratio went to zero in no time. As long as we can
restrict data entry to people who know what they're doing (not
necessarily developers, but people who know PG well enough to tell bug
from user error), I think it could work, and would beat the heck out of
the way we do things now.. if we used bugzilla this might give some impetus to the bugzilla
team's efforts to provide pg as a backend (maybe we could help with that)Red Hat has been using a PG-based version of bugzilla for some time.
I'm not sure what the holdup is in getting that work merged back
upstream, but I'd sure like to see it happen. Anyway we could start
with using their version, rather than suffer the ignominy of using That
Other Database to track our own bug reports ;-)
The status of this can be seen at:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98304
This item is listed on their "Master Plan" page at
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/roadmap.html as being in the
category "Things we want in 2.18 but will get pushed to 2.20 if they're
not completed by the time everything in the above list". I'd hate that
to happen.
The last comment on the bug page says:
"The Red Hat guys did a quick 'n dirty port. It works, but doesn't quite make
use of the best of PostgreSQL. Also, their tarball is out of date with the
current schema used by Bugzilla."
My experience is that migrating to new versions of bugzilla is a major pain, so I'd hate to start out with something we suspect we would have to throw away later.
The bug is actually assigned to David Lawrence at RedHat - maybe you'd like to get some status from him? :-)
. are there any active developers without web access? If not, why is
pure email interaction important?Bugzilla already does email output (ie, notify you of changes to bug
entries you're interested in) well enough. We thought during the last
go-round that it was important to have email input so we could allow
mail to pgsql-bugs to go directly into the tracking system, but in
hindsight that was a really bad idea. What we could use instead is for
someone knowledgeable to commit to transferring *valid* emailed bug
reports into the tracking system. Bruce could do that if he wants, but
there are surely dozens of other people who would be qualified to handle
this task.Actually, whatever software we pick to run the tracking system,
my guess is that the experiment will not stand or fall on the software.
What we need for success is one or two people who will take
responsibility for housekeeping: putting in valid reports, spotting
duplicate reports and doing the right cleanup, etc. Do we have any
volunteers for that sort of thing?
All good points. Bug triage is critical to success in my experience. You
can take the suggested approach of trying to rule them out before they
get into the system, or be aggressive about triage when they do get
there - I've seen both work. RedHat allows anybody (with or without
pooch) to sign up for an account and enter bugs, and I've had good
responses myself from them for bugs I've filed. There is a certain
niceness and openness about doing things that way, and I'm not sure the
triage effort is any greater. Your housekeeper looks at today's list and
either rules something not a bug or assigns it. For emailed bugs I agree
doing triage before they get into the system makes sense.
And, since I have argued for it I guess I should volunteer to help,
although my knowledge of pg internals is still on the steep part of the
learning curve.
cheers
andrew
