Tracking Issues

[friarsol]

Hey guys,

I know this comes up every once in a while and there have been mixed feelings about it. But I think there's some major benefit to actually using the Tracking Issues feature available on code.google. Sometimes when I only have an hour to code, I can knock one or two small bugs down, yet it takes me half that time I have searching the forums for something that I think is doable (and hasn't been done yet). If we were using the Issue Tracker it wouldn't take much time to find something.

The benefit also includes the ownership of issues. Recently, we had two devs both working on very similar abilities (abDestroyTgtV and abTapDestroyTgt) where if the dev working on the generic ability had clear ownership of the issue, the other dev could have spent his time on something that wouldn't be obsolete in a week.

Yes I know it's a big pain in the ass converting forum posts into Issues. Maybe we can start small and work our way up? Any time you start working on a new feature, just post it into the Issues with you as the owner. This way when people are looking for a new feature to code up, they don't duplicate someone else's effort. As for bugs that exist, we have a pretty good community here, and I have seen several "bug recaps" pop up, that maybe we can get in a centralized location. And from there just pop them into the Tracker. Better yet, have a few people who want to help, but aren't programmers put them into the Tracker for us.

I know freestorageaccount did a little bit of that a month or two ago, but after a few updates it gets too unwieldy to keep up with all of our changes. Once we have all of the active issues into the Tracker, keeping up with the changes is easy.

So check out the Issues. I'm going to start adding a few Features that I've seen posted, to get a little momentum in there. The more information we have around, the easier it'll be for people interested in helping the project to jump in.

[Rob Cashwalker]

OK, I've done some research, and found that there is a plugin for eclipse/Mylyn:
http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.or ... for-mylyn/

I had to install the mylyn stuff and then install the connector. Once I did, I was able to configure cardforge as a task repository, and then query it for all issues. Having done that, I can browse issues in eclipse.

Also, from the Google Issue Tracker wiki:

Integration with version control
If you are a developer on a project, and you are committing a change that fixes a known defect, or one the adds a requested enhancement, you will want to update the issue. You could do that by first committing the change, and then using the web UI to update the issue. But, it is also possible to update an issue by putting an issue tracker command in your commit-log message.

There are commit-log commands to:

Easily set an issue's status to Fixed.
Update any aspect of the issue, and add a comment.
Enter a new issue.
Request a code review.
The issue tracker handles an easy-to-use "short form" syntax to set an issue's status to Fixed. This would be used when the source code change you are committing completely fixes a defect or implements a requested enhancement. The syntax is any one of the following:

(Fixes issue NNN) Enclose command in parentheses
Fixes issue NNN. Full sentence in your log message description
Fixes issue NNN On a line by itself
The word Fixes can replaced with Closes or Resolves. The issue number can have a leading pound-sign (#) or not.

The other commit-log commands use a multi-line "long form" syntax that is more powerful. You might want to update an issue that is partly resolved or mitigated by your commit. You might want to enter a new issue as part of a commit, if you know that you are introducing a problem that you want to remember to resolve later. You might request a code review as part of a commit when you believe that you have finished work on a branch and you want a teammate to review it before you merge it into the trunk.

These commands begin on some line in your commit-log message and continue until the end of the message. The syntax is:

Your commit log message descriptive text...

COMMAND-LINE
ISSUE-FIELD-UPDATE*
COMMENT-TEXT...
Where COMMAND-LINE is one of the following:

Update issue NNN
New issue
New review
There can be any number of ISSUE-FIELD-UPDATE lines. These lines can be one of the following:

Summary: NEW-VALUE
Status: NEW-VALUE
Owner: NEW-VALUE
Cc: PLUS-MINUS-LIST
Labels: PLUS-MINUS-LIST
A PLUS-MINUS-LIST is a list of values to add, separated by spaces or commas. You can also remove an existing value by preceeding it with a minus-sign. When updating labels, any new label with an exclusive prefix will automatically remove any existing label with the same prefix. For example, adding Priority-High will automatically replace any Priority-Low or Priority-Medium labels on that same issue. But, adding Component-UI would not remove an existing Component-DB label, because Component is not normally an exclusive prefix.

The comment text can be any text that you would like to have added to the issue comment or description. Any field update lines that are invalid will be included in the comment text instead of being processed.

Here are some examples:

Change the validation routines to also accept unicode string (Fixes
issue 99998). And, speeds up that O(N^2) comparison. Fixes issue 99999.
Change the validation routines to also accept unicode string. And,
speeds up that O(N^2) comparison.

Fixes issue 99998
Fixes issue 99999
Change the validation routines to also accept unicode string. And,
speeds up that O(N^2) comparison.

Update issue 99998
Labels: Priority-Low Performance -i18n
The performance and internationalization aspects of this issue have
been handled. The remaining part of the issue has a clear work-around
and only affects a small number of users, so it is less important to fix.
Change the validation routines to also accept unicode string. And,
speeds up that O(N^2) comparison.

New issue
Summary: Update and translate end-user docs on validation
Labels: Component-Documentation
Now that we accept input in more languages, we should translate the on-line
help for that part of the application.

[Rob Cashwalker]

Well, the plugin doesn't seem to work, since it is only retrieving the completed tasks, none past 26.

[friarsol]

I have task list working. But I installed a second connector too, so it might be from them.

http://code.google.com/p/googlecode-mylyn-connector/

[Rob Cashwalker]

Ahh... that works much better.

So, I fixed issue 40 - etbDestroyTgt choosing untargetables... entirely through Eclipse, so no need to deal with the google code site to update the status/close it.

I'll finally cave on this point, as I was staunchly defending the thread-based approach.

[friarsol]

Excellent. Next time I'm in the city I'll buy you a beer.

[Rob Cashwalker]

Heh... except I'm in Queens... northeast, practically in Nassau. I'll PM you my cell, if you're really interested. Gando and I wanted to try to hook up last summer, but our schedules never matched.