Dreaming about cooperation with upstream [Was: Re: Upstream error reporting]

[Matej Cepl]

On 2008-03-19, 22:51 GMT, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> I just filed
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=438269
>
> Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a policy in place for Fedora to 
> be the "point of contact" for upstream bug reports so that
> those wishing to improve the Fedora experience don't have to create 
> multiple accounts with multiple upstream sources in order to report a bug?

yeah, life sucks. Sometimes.

and our tools are pitiful. Quite often.

In my ideal world, the workflow would be like this.

1) You as a reporter file a bug in Fedora bugzilla and that would 
   be mostly end of the story for you (barring some NEEDINFOs) --    
   then you should just sit, relax and watch programmers to fix 
   the bug.
2) Bug triager and/or developer finds out that this is not a bug 
   in the distro packaging, configuration, etc., and in the same 
   time it is not time-sensitive, security, super-important bug, 
   so that it should be fixed upstream.
   She clicks the button "UPSTREAM" and that is for some time the 
   end of the story for her (unless, which is quite often the 
   case, he is also working at upstream, so he can deal with the 
   bug there).
3) Our bugzilla collects all information from the bug itself, and 
   from other sources (fixing backtraces with our debuginfos, 
   providing versions of the packages in question, default 
   configuration, etc.) and files (via XML-RPC or something like 
   that) a bug in the upstream database.
4) Upstream bug triagers/developers check that the bug is not 
   duplicate, and do other necessary diaper-changing for the new 
   bug.
   Upstream developers when working on the resolving the issue, 
   could file a NEEDINFO, which would be automagically sent to 
   our bugzilla, and from that to you as a NEEDINFO from our 
   bugzilla. Your reply would go other way around, of course. You 
   are not logged in to the upstream bugzilla, nor you have an 
   account there.
   On every step (or every comment?) the upstream bugzilla sends 
   some information to our bugzilla, so we (you as a reporter and 
   our developers) can follow the progress of the bug.
5) Finally, when the bug is closed upstream, our package 
   maintainer (or all package maintainers of distributions 
   collaboratin with that particular upstream?) get a message 
   (through our bugzilla of course, so that it is logged) that 
   the issue was resolved and she should make an updated package 
   for our distro.
6) When it is done, our bug closes (with possible QA, Errata 
   process, etc. as usual).

Unfortunately, so far this is just a pipedream and from point 2) 
to 5) it doesn't exist at all.

Unfortunately, there is a huge value for developer to have actual 
real reporter (and not a fake one like Fedora bug triager) 
available. Upstream reporter may need some information, he will 
certainly need at least one attempt to reproduce the bug with his 
fix included (which in turn may require cooperation of the 
downstream package maintainer; what a mess :-(), he may (and he 
probbaly will) find out that some assumption original reporter, 
and bug triager had on their minds when filing the upstream bug 
were wrong, etc.

Therefore in the ideal world with the current very non-ideal 
tooling I would love every our reporter, made an account upstream 
and file the bug there (and let me know the number of the 
upstream bug), unfortunately it is obviously too harsh for many 
reporters, so we are muddling through the current mess as best as 
we can.

Best,

Matěj