[Dev] Last call: bugzilla components proposal

[Philippe Bossut]

Andi Vajda wrote:
> I'm not objecting to people using bugzilla for tracking tasks as 
> opposed to bugs. What I'm objecting to is creating components that 
> would baffle regular chandler users or anyone not familiar with 
> Chandler's development tasks when all they want to do is file a normal 
> bug.
> I understand that creating two bugzilla instances is unpractical. How 
> about creating task-tracking specific components and suffix their name 
> with '_task' so that users filing a real bug can ignore them ? 
Component don't live as "tasks" for very long (hopefully). They get 
implemented and very soon users or, more likely, our QA is starting to 
log bugs (as in "code defect") against them. Now, that's the '_task' 
suffix that's confusing.

Also, there are usually a whole set of tasks to be implemented for any 
given component or feature, a complex problem being cut in a set of more 
manageable subproblems. So it rapidly happens that we have both tasks 
and bugs logged against the same component because it's in an in-between 
stage (and it will happen with 0.7 since we decided to release "alpha"). 
It's actually handy at that point to have both bugs and tasks in the 
same database so QA can check what's not completed before logging a new 
bug and, if logging something, we can close a bug as a dupe of a task 
not yet implemented.

Last, users filing bugs already have to ignore arcane components like 
"Hardhat", "tools" "wxPython" or, dare I say, "Repository". But those 
components are important for us to dispatch the work or everything will 
end up into an "Application" morass. The list of components is therefore 
a compromise between what works for developers, QA and casual users.

That being said, yes, care in choosing the new components is required so 
that we're not overwhelming casual users with a looong list of 
components. Using prefix is often useful so to group things and allow 
users to skip things that are not relevant when filing a bug (jump over 
all "calendar" things or all "documentation" things). It's a little 
tricky but it's not impossible.

Glad to see we're having this discussion so. I think we can converge soon.

Cheers,
- Philippe