#11376: Tracker discourages use ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: stephen@xemacs.org | Owner: jmpp@macports.org Type: defect | Status: new Priority: Normal | Milestone: Component: infrastructure | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Old description:
Trac may be wonderful, but what I wonder is how regular users can stand it!
1. Trac forgets my login when following most links. I'm not really sure what's going on here, because it doesn't always do this. For example, if I enter "http://www.macports.org/", then go there, it remembers earlier logins in the current browser sessin, and if there is no login session, the password memory makes logging in easy. Both facilities fail when I follow links into the tracker. Maybe it's that trac doesn't live at www.macports.org, but at trac.macports.org, and my browser doesn't send the cookie.
2. ''All'' trac pages should have a New Bug button.
3. Many displays assume I have space for a 1200 pixel width window. (a) I don't on several of my workstations (subnotebooks), and (b) I am not a fan of letting any application take over my entire screen, especially not one subject to network delays.
4. This wouldn't be so bad (the wide display does contain a lot of information, and it's quite useful to keep it on one line), except that a lot of useful controls are right-justified and end up off-screen (login, search).
5. There's no easy way to search for bugs against a single port.
6. The custom query as initialized looks for bugs assigned to me. Make that a standard query, for heaven's sake. The custom query is the only available workaround for #5, so you're encouraging users to enter duplicate bugs by making it annoying to search for existing bugs. The custom query should be initialized to search the summary.
7. Ticket properties are insane. Yes, I've come to "expect" MacPorts to throw at least one reportable bug a week, not to mention frequent minor annoyances, but what does "Priority: expected" mean in terms of getting things ''fixed''?
Version: Most bugs have nothing to do with the version of "port", and everything to do with the portfile. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a way to express the fact that you're tracking base by subversion, which is where you'd expect the most "port" bugs to show up.
Component: is trac "www" or "infrastructure"? Does "Uninstaller" really need its own component?
Severity: hardly seems the right way to describe an enum of "Crash/data loss", "Serious", "Security", "Performance", "Other".
Keywords: What keywords are acceptable?
8. Help isn't very visible.
9. Help doesn't describe this tracker in any detail.
10. Help doesn't describe this tracker accurately (it implies that Priority/Severity should not be separate properties).
New description: Trac may be wonderful, but what I wonder is how regular users can stand it! 1. Trac forgets my login when following most links. I'm not really sure what's going on here, because it doesn't always do this. For example, if I enter "http://www.macports.org/", then go there, it remembers earlier logins in the current browser sessin, and if there is no login session, the password memory makes logging in easy. Both facilities fail when I follow links into the tracker. Maybe it's that trac doesn't live at www.macports.org, but at trac.macports.org, and my browser doesn't send the cookie. 2. ~~''All'' trac pages should have a New Bug button.~~ 3. Many displays assume I have space for a 1200 pixel width window. (a) I don't on several of my workstations (subnotebooks), and (b) I am not a fan of letting any application take over my entire screen, especially not one subject to network delays. 4. This wouldn't be so bad (the wide display does contain a lot of information, and it's quite useful to keep it on one line), except that a lot of useful controls are right-justified and end up off-screen (login, search). 5. There's no easy way to search for bugs against a single port. 6. ~~The custom query as initialized looks for bugs assigned to me. Make that a standard query, for heaven's sake. The custom query is the only available workaround for #5, so you're encouraging users to enter duplicate bugs by making it annoying to search for existing bugs. The custom query should be initialized to search the summary.~~ 7. ~~Ticket properties are insane. Yes, I've come to "expect" MacPorts to throw at least one reportable bug a week, not to mention frequent minor annoyances, but what does "Priority: expected" mean in terms of getting things ''fixed''?~~ ~~Version: Most bugs have nothing to do with the version of "port", and everything to do with the portfile. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a way to express the fact that you're tracking base by subversion, which is where you'd expect the most "port" bugs to show up.~~ ~~Component: is trac "www" or "infrastructure"? Does "Uninstaller" really need its own component?~~ ~~Severity: hardly seems the right way to describe an enum of "Crash/data loss", "Serious", "Security", "Performance", "Other".~~ ~~Keywords: What keywords are acceptable?~~ 8. Help isn't very visible. 9. ~~Help doesn't describe this tracker in any detail.~~ 10. ~~Help doesn't describe this tracker accurately (it implies that Priority/Severity should not be separate properties).~~ Comment (by jmpp@macports.org): It should be noted that this ticket spans multiple issues and the preferred way to report them is one issue per ticket. Nevertheless, since discussion already happened on this ticket, I'm going to comment on each of the points raised and will cross them out of the original description if already fixed: 1. This is a Mac OS Forge issue related to virtual hostnames, if I'm not mistaken, and there's nothing the MacPorts team can do about it. I don't think it's fixed, as I've personally seen jumps from http based URLs to https ones, from trac.macports.org based URLs to trac.macosforge.org ones, and even from and to svn.macports.org URLs (with the /projects/macports path). Tickets #10665 and #13428 are presumably related to this issue. 2. This is fixed, crossed out from the original description. 3. See 4 below. 4. I'd love it if our Trac portal could be unified into the look of our new website, but I'm not too sure this is possible. Mac OS Forge personnel has to get back to us on this one, but I'd think they still have more pressing matters to attend to so this might be a low priority issue. 5. If you could provide the SQL glue to build up per port queries I'd happily set them up at the [http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/query query] page. Maybe the TracReports page might come in handy for this. 6. You mean to make the query that searches for tickets assigned to the logged in user a standard [http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/report report]? If so, then {7} and {8} serve that purpose, but you have to be logged in for them to work. In any case, I don't see how this helps with item 5 above. Lastly, what do you mean by initializing the custom query to search the summary? Its initialization doesn't take any user input parameters, so it's hard to search the summary for anything in particular. Custom query initializes to tickets assigned to the logged in user, displaying the summary among other ticket fields, so I'd say this is also covered for. Crossing out from original description. 7. Ticket properties have been standardized to the most common values: "Priorities" range from High to Low, including "Not set"; "Version" should always match the version of MacPorts you're using, with the svn trunk version always being $current_release + 1 (which is always accounted for in the "Version" property of tickets), or simply not set ("blank") for issues unrelated to MacPorts releases (like the guide or website); Trac belongs to the infrastructure component, Installer is no longer a valid component; the "Severity" property has been removed; for a particular report, any keyword which you might think is related to the issue itself and/or might help find it through Trac searches is an appropriate value for the corresponding field. Reading our [http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets ticketing guidelines] will help in understanding our workflow. Crossing out from original description. 8. If you mean the Help link on the sidebar, then this is more than anything related to the visual design of our Trac portal, see item 4 above in my reply. 9. That help link is about Trac itself. When you say "describe this tracker" I can only assume you are referring to a description of MacPorts itself and our particular Trac workflow. Our new [http://www.macports.org web page] and [http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets ticketing guidelines] fill that void. Crossing out from original description. 10. We don't maintain that help document and, above all, "Severity" is no longer a valid ticket property for us. Crossing out from original description. 11. (from the first ticket comment) Assigning to a port maintainer is as simple as selecting his/her e-mail address from the "Assign to" pop-up menu for the corresponding ticket property. even though currently not all maintainers are listed in that menu, as per the discussion in ticket #13352. Nevertheless, the facility to assign tickets is there and readily available, so this issue is also covered for. -jmpp -- Ticket URL: <http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/11376#comment:5> MacPorts </projects/macports> Ports system for Mac OS