Re: Upstream access to Ubuntu package bugs

[Bjorn Tillenius <bjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 11:35:26AM -0300, Christian Robottom Reis wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 03:10:50PM +0100, Matthew Revell wrote:
> > I'm told that they've expressed frustration at not being able to set 
> > importances, see private bugs and set wishlist bugs. These tasks are 
> > reserved for the Ubuntu drivers, as it's an Ubuntu package and not the 
> > upstream project.
> 
> I remember this request, but there seems to be a rush to solutions
> instead of considering how they should work.

I agree, it seems a bit strange that upstream should prioritize Ubuntu
bugs. OTOH, if upstream wants to help with Ubuntu bugs, we shouldn't
stop them.


> There are two ways forward here: either the Amarok team go through the
> process of being Ubuntu QA and are given the required privileges, or
> they manage their own Amarok tasks in bugs.
> 
> There are ways of improving both these approaches:
> 
>     - We could offer a per-package official bug contact, which would
>       still be official Ubuntu QA, but only for a specific package.

I was going to suggest something like this. Tom is currently working on
'structual subscriptions', which will allow you to subscribe to
different objects, for example projects and packages. When that is done,
we can convert the existing package bug contacts to subscriptions, and
then we can use package bug contacts to give permission for working on
bugs for a specific package. That way there's no real difference between
being a bug contact for a distro, project, or package, it's only the
scope that's different, so i think it's a better model than what we have
today.


>     - We could offer ways of better tracking the upstream task for
>       the Ubuntu context. This requires some brainstorming, but maybe
>       for triage purposes we could say "Ubuntu task follows upstream".

This is also an interesting option, although it takes more effort to
discuss and implements, so I don't think we should do this right now.
The distro team have already asked for something like this, since they
have a few projects that they are upstream for (e.g. upstart, apport,
update-manager).


> I'd be happy to consider either of these approaches. Do people have
> other suggestions of changes we could make?

Another suggestion is of course to talk to the Amorak team and see why
they want to work on the Ubuntu bugs. Maybe it'd be enough if we made it
really easy to forward the Ubuntu bugs to their bug tracker.

Regards,

Bjorn