Please "attach" files to bugzilla, instead of pasting into amassive comment

[Mike A. Harris]

Jason Montleon wrote:
> Can bugzilla limit the line or character count?  That way RedHat/Fedora 
> developers can sit down, and come to a consensus as to what is "too 
> much", and kick back an error when people try to post huge comments, 
> stating that they need to include information over x number of lines as 
> an attachment, or reduce the size of their comment?

I'm not sure, but that wouldn't be a really viable solution either,
because there are times in which a real comment can be larger than
what a config file might be.  So limiting the text length would not
solve the problem, at least not for all cases, and it would impose
a new restriction that could create a problem for a reasonable use
case.

> I say this, because 
> we already have one developer that seems to want virtually any sort of 
> output as an attachment, and another stating that he likes seeing strace 
> output put into the comments.

You misunderstood the message I think.  A stack backtrace and an strace
are two different things.  A backtrace tends to be 8-20 lines or less
and is generally useful to read right in a comment, and does not
generally distract from the bug.

An strace however traces system calls and signals, and are generally
text files that are megabytes in size.  That type of info is something
you don't ever want in-line in a bug comment no matter who you are.
You want to open an strace in a new browser window as a text attachment
if it is small enough (use judgement when attaching as to what small
enough is.  I'd say < 250Kb).  If it's larger than "small enough", gzip
it so bugzilla's poor database isn't 6 billion terabytes.


> Another developer is going to write in a 
> minute and say strace output is too long, but lspci output should be in 
> the comment (as an example), and then the whole thing once again boils 
> down to user/developer preference....

What it boils down to is common sense.  If something is a _file_, then
_always_ attach it as a file.  If it is the output of a command, and it
is large, output redirect it to a file and attach the file as a file
attachment.  If it is a small number of lines of output from lspci or
something and isn't going to distract from reading the bug comment to
comment, put it inline.

Nobody wants to come to a bug they haven't seen for a few weeks/months
and try to skim/review it to see what the deal is, to have to scroll
over 2 or 3 500 line X server log files that were pasted into a massive
comment.

If someone does want that, let me know who they are and I'll gladly
reassign all bugs that come in like that to them.


-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.