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rakudobug@perl.org isn't easily discoverable #8
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I think we need a 'How to report bugs' page. Maybe also mention it on FAQ. |
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We need to get with the modern times and allow people to "login with" (e.g. GitHub), or don't even ask for login. Ideally there should be smth like GitHub for tickets. RT is meh. |
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People love to hate RT, but I haven't yet seen a github project with 800+ issues that was able to handle them well. |
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It is probably the frontend that people love or hate. And that could Doing it the Perl way probably means to have many different ways to submit So I'd suggest that everybody complaining just opens an issue describing My personal favorite for submitting issues is indeed eMail. Of course, just On Wed, 3 Feb 2016, Moritz Lenz wrote:
Oetiker+Partner AG tel: +41 62 775 9903 (direct) |
What do you mean by “handle them well”? What's the problem? And how much should we care about developers looking through these bug reports? I think that the most important thing is that it should be easy for users to report bugs. Everything else is less important. And although I appreciate the ability to send an email to rakudobug@perl.org, let's face it – RT sucks. It is horrible. Even if you completely ignore the web interface and just send an email it is still far from being ok. Much bigger issue is that although most people know how to report bugs, they still don't know how to comment on them… It is not obvious, and it is very energy consuming (compare that to just writing a comment into a textarea and pressing “submit”). bitcard account? You've got to be kidding me. I've tried making one but it just doesn't work. RT is terribly broken. Every time I login it just disables everything, I can't even view the tickets while I'm logged in. Open any bug report and click 「Comment」 button. You'll see this:
Yeah, RT, fuck you too. After 100 submitted tickets I can say that if you give me a chance to submit bugs on GitHub I'll be the happiest man. This, however, doesn't mean that we should move everything to GitHub. One way to do it is to mirror all bug reports to RT. This will make it more obvious how to report bugs (most developers know about GitHub, right?). Anyway, I think that the current situation is not TIMTOWTDIish enough. To a point when it makes some people (me) cry. I hope that something could be done with it (but I don't think that there is a way to fix RT, so I'd much rather abandon the ship…). |
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On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev
I say "amen" to most all Aleks says. And I just looked, Bugzilla has a plugin for Git integration--might be Cheers! -Tom |
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Perl 5 comes with with |
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@AlexDaniel to be honest I didn't experience anything of what you wrote. It might depend on the fact that I have a bitcard account since a long time or just sheer luck, but I was able to log in correctly, look for bugs, open them, hit the dreaded "Comment" button and actually get a form for commenting back. I didn't go as far as commenting as I had nothing to say on the example bug I selected. I'm not trying to push a "works on my PC" answer to your frustrations, but RT so far it provided a decent (although not really visually appealing IMHO) service to the Perl community at large and they deserve the right to a bug report before just tossing them away because "it does not work". WRT the subject of the thread, I didn't follow the discussion in IRC but I would like to understand:
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Couldn't we create a form on rakudo.org or perl6.org that submits the email for you? The form could even search issues based on your subject line and then if you decide to continue as a comment, it would just plug the required RT# into the subject line of the email. It could either send it for you from the server or just open a mailto link with the details filled in from the form. |
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I agree that RT really doesn't provide a great user experience. Email isn't a great user experience for most folks either. They expect something pointy and clicky. GitHub isn't perfect, but it's pervasive, which is nice. |
I'm not sure what you mean by that. To clarify, Perl 6 has always been about “torture the implementor on behalf of the user” kind of thing. So if we are looking for a balance between “the users are frustrated with the ticket system” and “the developers are frustrated with the ticket system” we should probably move as much pain as we can from the user side. |
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On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 8:31 AM, Flavio Poletti notifications@github.com wrote:
Him Flavio. Good comments, but it may be the OS and browser. I meant I, too, have been a long-time RT account holder (with a bitcard I have always tried to use RT on Linux (Debian for the past eight I still have problems with RT as others have had. When I login with And, again, I have attempted to ask for help with the problem through I vaguely remember the reason I joined years ago was for Perl 5 Just my experience so far. Best, -Tom P.S. With a new language, perhaps its time for a new bug tracker. And |
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@tbrowder I've uses RT for some time as a CPAN Author and it mostly did its job but again, "works for me" is no excuse. My consideration was about providing feedback on issues to the devs of RT instead of just ditching it away for those very issues. I'm anyway curious of the alternatives if we want to select something different, e.g. more in line with Perl 6 approach ("torture the implementor on behalf of the user") and what a casual user might expect ("... something pointy and clicky" as opposed to email). I have to admit I didn't understand the reference to GCC though. |
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Does RT provide something that github’s issue tracking does not? The experience from a reporter/reporting perspective is kind of nice and you can attribute bugs/enhancements to milestones (or releases) and you get feedback on bugs you’ve filed or are interested in; RT seems to turn into a black hole but that could just be me not using it well. To @moritz’s point, it doesn’t handle huge volumes of data well out of the box. I have private repos that have had 300-500 issues on them that are manageable but require administrative work to keep things organized, filed, and assigned to milestones/people. Essentially it requires someone to do the administrative side of a project manager. Those things said, RT is pretty decent as far as bug tracking systems go. Github’s is nice from a “pointy clicky” perspective. Both require management and reporter/maintainer tooling knowledge or training. |
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Some points:
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You run it and it asks you a few questions about the bug you're reporting, as well as prepares some info about your environment (OS, perl version, etc). Then, as I recall, it attempts to email the report and if that fails, it gives you what to mail and where to mail it and you just email it yourself. I don't think that last part is too usable; maybe we could make it so if it fails to send email, it'd attempt to use the web API to create it, first. |
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I don't think "torture the implementors on behalf of the user" applies here – we've already got enough bugs in Perl 6 for doing that, without also having to fight with the (non-Perl 6) tool used to track them. Everyone's a user in this context (and the implementors insufficiently tortured, IMHO). |
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Here's my first draft at an issue submitter design. I think the search results will accordion out between the subject field and version dropdowns. It will then fold back in if you click any of the |
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perlbug: what if I have a problem installing Perl? How do I use perlbug then? RT: It was good. But now we have better. Let's not be romantic about it. It's time to move on. The most widely used ticket system now is GitHub. It's also not perfect. But almost every developer has an account. If they don't, I'm sure GitHub made it VERY straightforward to onboard. After all, it's a business and they probably optimized the on boarding funnel to the max. There is code highlighting, you can link to images. Email notifications out of the box. |
You email to
Was it? It seems ridiculously.. RIDICULOUSLY.. over-engineered to the point where you can't even link to the Perl 6 queue directly because of CSRF protection and you are presented with more than a dozen of search fields to do a search. I'm glad sanity prevailed and they stopped before adding such silly things as editing.
I know quite a few people without one, due to concerns over GitHub's terms of service.
Yeah, many services offer a one-click subscription if you have, say, a Facebook account, but why the hell would I want to get "onboard" of some service I never intend to use? Multiple services get hacked yearly with all the emails and personal info leaked. Why would I want to increase my risk just so some group of people could fix their software? Each hoop your users have to jump through to report a bug filters out a portion of reporters unwilling to jump through it... which brings me back on topic:
The one obvious thing I see missing is spam protection, like reCAPTCHA. Also, to me, that form looks daunting. If a compiler implements a particular language version, why do I need to specify the langauge version as well? I've no idea what compiler version I'm using, how do I find it? Actually, all I'm reporting is a typo in the docs, do I need to fill all of that stuff out? I'd go with the simplest form, like in the screenshot below, as the primary form and maybe have all of the fields you propose available in the "advanced" version of the form. |
What's the use of bug reports if developers don't look through them, find the most relevant, and fix them? |
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@zoffixznet maybe the default should be the advanced form. Otherwise, no one will ever use it. "Path of least clicks" and all. The language drop down has no other available option, I could remove it but it's just there for future-proofing (and I think it's healthy to remind users of the distinction between language and compiler). Also in regards to a simple form, perhaps what I could do is include a category dropdown and it would subsequently show different fields for each. For |
For me, the things that RT provides are dashboards for organizing issues and attachments. I have a dashboard for issues I've filed (which GH provides), but also for issues I've starred in RT, which I find interesting and have maybe considered fixing myself. As far as I know, the only way to "star" issues is to watch them for updates, assign yourself, or label it. Watching for updates gets you updates on the issue, but I can't ask the top level issues view to just "show me issues I'm watching". Assigning an issue to myself would communicate the wrong message (plus, can you have more than one assignee, if multiple people want to star an issue?), and labelling would just make labels noisy for everyone. Regarding attachments, I know GH issues supports image attachments, but I thought that it doesn't allow arbitrary text files (although that may have changed). I make heavy use of RT's attachments to attach example code that demonstrates a bug. Granted, you can put that in the issue in fenced code blocks, but to me that's LTA.
Which ways in particular make GH issues better than RT?
True, but as @zoffixznet points out, not everyone wants to have a GH account.
I'll concede that.
You can still attach images in RT. Granted, I don't think it will display them inline, which is definitely LTA.
Doesn't RT do this too? Other advantages others have pointed out:
I'm definitely coming at this from the perspective of a veteran RT user, but I don't know if we should uproot our entire issues system for a handful of advantages. I have no love for RT, but to me, GH issues just feels like a minimalistic issue system for projects to use until they get off the ground - until they need to migrate to a "serious" issue tracker. The recent "Open Letter to GitHub" seems to confirm that. |
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On Thu, 4 Feb 2016, Jake Russo wrote:
I think the distinction between language and compiler is better left to the
Oh my god ... If I want to report a typo, I'd rather just have a text field to enter s/string with bug/string without bug I could even put that into the subject line of my eMail. I certainly don't want to find my way through a myriade of selections in a I am all for submitting useful bug reports, but I'd suggest to rather err on Cheers, Oetiker+Partner AG tel: +41 62 775 9903 (direct) |
Right. I think what @MadcapJake is saying is that he can javascript it up so the form starts simple (just a drop-down "what type of problem are you reporting"), and then the form only gets more detailed if the user goes in that direction. For example, if the user says it's a doc bug, then they just type in the box, prove they're not a bot, and click submit. If the user says it's a something more technical, then the form can expand to ask which implementation, version, etc. As for explanation of the form's fields, I've usually found hover tooltips to be excellent. For example, the tooltip over a "compiler version" field a might contain something like "Run |
👍 on a dynamic form that asks extra questions, providing the user can just short-circuit it and submit the form if they "had enough" |
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@uvtc right! and that's a great idea for the tooltips! I think I've come up with a plan that should alleviate some of the fears of complexity. Instead of changing the html of the fields, the issue category would just change the placeholder text. This way the user can just skip the category and get a blank form and do their thang, but if they want to get some direction on how to fill it out, then selecting a category will add some general questions into the body to be filled out (or removed). |
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What @zoffixznet posted is perfect. The form should not force you into some strict structure, but it should give you some good ideas (just like it does on the image, great!). Yes, yes and yes! Just think about it, if that thing submits a bug to RT just like we do now, then we're not loosing anything but at the same time it is much, MUCH more easier to submit bugs (I don't even have to type that this bug should go to rakudobug@perl.org!). No javascript bullshit required, this is just awesome. That being said, it should also link to other places to submit bug reports. E.g. documentation bugs should go to https://github.com/perl6/doc/issues/new (notice how it points directly to the submit form). Also, it is missing a Title field.
I'm not saying that bug reports should go down the sink. I'm saying that it should be easier for users to submit bugs, but it's OK if it will be a bit harder for developers to view these bugs. I think that developers will do it anyway, but most users will just say “screw it” if it's too tedious.
Uhm, not really. Often I find activity on my bug reports that I haven't seen in my email. Non-comment changes are not emailed for sure, but I think that sometimes comments are left unnoticed too. Also, in the past I emailed comments to the wrong address (there are different email addresses!) so every time I do something on RT I just go and hit F5 until it actually appears, otherwise I have no idea if it actually succeeded and if everything is correct. Unless someone can guide me through getting my bitcard account to work I don't think that I'll ever feel at home when using RT. Too much pain. Sure enough, a pretty form on perl6.org is not going to solve most of these problems (so I'm still voting to switch to something else), but at least it may hide some of them. Now comes a good question: if we're going to have a form on perl6.org, is it possible to get a link to the bug report once it is submitted? |
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On Thu, 4 Feb 2016, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev wrote:
I think this is just a matter of configuration Oetiker+Partner AG tel: +41 62 775 9903 (direct) |
Configuration of what? I can't get my bitcard account to work, so I cannot fix that myself. |
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On Thu, 4 Feb 2016, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev wrote:
Of what is sent out by eMail. But I don't know out of my head what and Oetiker+Partner AG tel: +41 62 775 9903 (direct) |
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On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 8:04 AM, Tom Browder tom.browder@gmail.com wrote:
I would be willing to donate exclusive use of one of my leased server Intel Core 2 Quad - Pre-built Server - dedi3 It's not been touched yet. -Tom |
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If we are going to go with self hosted form, then we can do the following: Page 1: Name, Email, Textarea (bug report) Once user submits that, the ticket is already saved, but on page 2, user has an option to add more info. There we can ask additional questions about versions and all that. Worst case, we have the info already from page 1 and we can talk to the user to find out more, if necessary. If we look at a bug report as a form of conversion, then it should ask the bare minimum of questions. Arguable it doesn't even need to ask for user's name. Just an email and description of the problem. |
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On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev
Aleks, I finally got a response to my plea for rt help at In spite of the better view on RT now, I'll put my money would on Cheers to all! -Tom |
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I'm not sure moving from one fairly hard to use piece of software (RT) to another (Bugzilla) would help much. Both of these tools are great for organizations that need a lot of complex logic around bug reporting. These tools provide a lot of power for people who spend a lot of time using them. However, the most important use case here is "casual/first time Perl 6 user finds a bug and wants to report it". From that standpoint, GitHub is a huge win. A custom form on the perl6.org site is better than what we have now. Bugzilla is really not any better than RT for that use case. |
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On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Dave Rolsky notifications@github.com wrote:
Dave, I do agree with you. What I failed to remember was the Best, -Tom |
Yeah, I also wrote an email to the same address and they fixed my account too (it took two days). Perhaps this should be mentioned somewhere. |
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Somewhat relevant: https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates |
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Ok, my issue submitter is making progress, you can check it out here. I still need input on issue templates, please submit a PR (place them in |
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I think this issue may be largely moot now given Raku/raku.org#96 (Rakudo bugs are now using GitHub issues). Also, see duplicate of this issue at Raku/raku.org#61. |
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This is indeed an old thread that can be closed now that Github Issues are also used. |

A thread on the perl6-users mailing list prompted me to open this task.
A new user asked how to report bugs, another user suggested the rather time-consuming way of registering a bitcard account and using the "new ticket" form on rt.perl.org.
This is a nice way to lose potential bug reports. Not only is it long and involved, but it also requires users to create Yet Another Account.
We should make rakudobug@perl.org more prominent than just:
Thoughts?
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