« CVS Write Privileges | Main | Camino Bugs Over Time »
October 12, 2004
Camino Status Upate and Another Call For Help
This week I've been able to spend more time than usual actually working with Camino's code. I'm not sure how much detail people want about what is going on code-wise in the Camino project, but I figure if people are interested they can read these updates, and if not they can move on. I'll stop doing these if I get the impression that nobody cares :)
First off, for a list of patches that have landed recently, click here. This list is dynamic, so you can bookmark the page and it will always show you the latest changes made to Camino.
Patches actively up for review right now (i.e. patches that will probably be committed/landed soon) include:
184878 - when storing login details in keychain, the wrong username field is remembered
175924 - Fonts tab of Appearance prefpane uses unlabeled buttons
257281 - add browser reset functionality
In addition to this status update, I'd like to put out a call for help triaging Camino bugs. We need more people to confirm/categorize/prioritize Camino bugs that have been filed and are not yet resolved. This includes confirming that a given bug exists, adding any useful infomormation about test systems and how to reproduce the bug, assigning priorities to bugs, giving bugs target fix dates (0.9, 1.0, future... please exercise good judgement about this), and notifying relevent developers by assigning the bugs to them or adding them to the cc list. This sort of triaging make life much easier for us developers and has a big impact on the project's priorities and overall efficiency.
As of my writing this, there are exactly 650 open Camino bugs. Click here for the list. Some bugs have never been triaged and others were triaged so long ago that the information in them is not up-to-date any more. If we could get all of these bugs triaged, that would be amazing. I can't tell you how much that would help us developers. We simply don't have time to write the code that needs to be written and handle critical tasks like this at the same time. We are quite dependent on the community of Camino users that help out with these tasks, and we are infinitely grateful for the help we have received thus far. Programmers are not the only driving force behind the project - take my word for it when I say that helping with things like bug triage makes a big difference.
Posted by josh at October 12, 2004 12:13 AM
Comments
Josh - keep the detail coming! Detail is good!
Posted by: Jon Hicks at October 12, 2004 3:13 AM
Josh, I think this entry could be abridged and put as "static" content into the new Camino website.
Also, I think we could set-up a community or sort of, with a #caminobugs channel where to hold bugfests, possibly a site or wiki on mozdev.org or wherever members of the community can post content without bother m.o
Posted by: Pinolo at October 12, 2004 4:51 PM
A little info is always a good thing. Much appreciated!
Posted by: Smokey Ardisson at October 13, 2004 2:58 AM
From a triaging perspective, it might be useful to have blocking-camino-0.9 and blocking-camino-1.0 flags. That way, testers and users could nominate what we feel are important bugs, and Camino's equivalent of drivers (you, pink, and perhaps others) could decide what's feasible from a programming perspective.
Posted by: Louis Bennett at October 13, 2004 10:49 AM
Louis - these flags exist, and as it is we mostly pay attention to the 0.9 list. Partly we need to triage all the bugs to make sure everything that should be on the 0.9 list gets there.
Posted by: Josh Aas at October 13, 2004 11:07 AM
So triaging means:
Get 0.8.1 and a nightly. Pick a bug, check both, see if you can reproduce it. Add a comment with system info & OS version & your findings.
Is that about right?
Posted by: Mick Fox at October 14, 2004 7:36 AM
Having read more carefully, "adding steps to reproduce" should be added to my little list.
Changing priorities and milestones is only allowed if you're the owner or submitter or such.
Adding developers to cc fields feels like spam. I can't imagine you'd want to be emailed on so many bugs. Maybe sending you an email personally with a list of bugs worked on would be more appropriate?
For example bug 178372:
Add a comment like: "I agree with comment#1, this should be marked WONTFIX or at least change the priority to enhancement."
Then after doing a few, give you a heads up.
Sound good?
Posted by: Mick Fox at October 14, 2004 8:25 AM
Mick: That is about right. More information is here:
http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/
Thanks.
Posted by: Josh Aas at October 14, 2004 9:32 AM
These were helpful too
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/unconfirmed.html
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/browser/prescreening.html
Posted by: Mick Fox at October 14, 2004 12:04 PM