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Reorganize tracker docs in the devguide #57664
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The documentation about the bug tracker is sparse in a few different places. The devguide contains 4 pages:
There are two wiki pages: And an additional page in the official docs: Some content is duplicated, 5 and 7 are similar, and 6 has the same content of 3 and 2. The idea is to have 2 pages about the tracker in the devguide:
The attached patch groups this information in the new page, removing the old pages (1, 2, 4) and updating the index and toc. The content of the wiki pages (5 and 6) should be deleted and a pointer to the devguide should be added instead. Currently the structure of the new page is: I mostly copy/pasted from other pages (e.g. "Using the Issue Tracker" is copied from 7), so this should be reorganized a bit.
It might be better to just list all these things, or group them in "basic" (searching/reporting) and "advanced" (everything else), or keep a step by step "how to report a bug" separate and just describe specific tasks here (like "how to register/login/report"). |
I think the reason these docs are scattered is that the devguide is a guide, not a reference manual. I don't think this patch makes sense: if the tracker really needed so much text to explain how it works, then the tracker would have a severe UI problem. Most people use bug trackers without ever reading a manual first. |
It seems to me there's not that much text on how the tracker itself works. Only sections "Checking if a bug already exists" and "Reporting an issue" have this kind of information. The text in these sections seems to be mostly from http://docs.python.org/bugs.html, so it's not new content. Other sections mostly deal with the way the tracker is used or should be used for the development of CPython. I like the idea of this patch. As Antoine said, people usually know how to use web applications nowadays, so moving the info from http://docs.python.org/bugs.html to devguide (replacing it with a shorter description) sounds good. |
Documenting the tracker UI itself isn't the big issue - what is useful (and what I think Ezio is getting at) is having a single place where newcomers can get a better idea of how we *use* the tracker. If someone just wants to report a bug, then sure, they shouldn't need to read the dev guide (so I disagree with the idea of making any significant changes to the bugs page in the docs), but making it easier for newcomers to learn the ropes is the main reason we have a devguide at all, so I'm definitely +1 on the general idea. It would also give us a place to document the auto-linkification rules (similar to what was done recently for the post-commit hooks). |
+1 on grouping existing info into one or two files in the devguide |
This is true, however different people can figure out a different amount of things just by using and experiment with something. While most of the tasks should be obvious, some are a bit more advanced, and even the "obvious" once might not be obvious for everyone. So IMHO writing down a few sentences doesn't hurt.
I also don't expect them to follow the bugs page in the doc step by step. I think they can figure out most of the steps on their own -- but if they get stuck with a specific step (e.g. registration), they should be able to find more information about it easily. Having all the doc in the same place and a short section for each possible step would solve this, and it's IMHO better than a descriptive section of the whole process. Similarly this applies for the description of the fields (that's why I used a list and highlighted with bold text the fields' names).
I was planning to replace it with a paragraph that says that something like "If you think you found an issue, you can search the bug tracker at <bugs.python.org> to see if the issue is known. If it's not, you can register to the issue tracker and report it. For more information see the <devguide>. It is not possible to submit anonymous reports."
This is already documented in the "triaging" page, in the section about the "Comment" field. This issue was initially reported on the meta tracker0, I moved the discussion here to get more people involved before making changes. |
Well, it does hurt, because the more sentences you write, the more the The devguide was supposed to be something that you read quickly and And, really, if you want people to feel more comfortable with the
The devguide is *not* primarily for core developers. It's for new |
OTOH is easy to ignore an "how to register to the tracker" section if you are already registered or if you don't need to register now or you think you know how to do it.
Agreed, and registering and using the bug tracker is part of this set up, regardless of how obvious the process is (or should be). Anyway, it would be fine with me to not document these "basic" tasks (how to register/login/search), but it seems to me that people think that the content of the bugs page is useful, and I would rather have it with the rest in the devguide, rather than having it in a separate page. |
Thanks Antoine, I was not aware of that or I had forgotten it. The old python.org/dev pages contained information for new and experienced core devs too, so I thought the devguide was intended to contain the same info. I’ll support a clearer separation between the guide and the reference, to make the devguide less overwhelming for new contributors but still complete for core devs. |
Something else such docs could cover is how to manage remote Hg repos such that the "Create Patch" button does the right thing. Basically, you need to make sure an appropriate CPython version is found in the ancestors of the tip your working branch. This is most easily achieved either by working directly on the default branch in your remote repo, or else by merging directly from default to your feature branch (i.e. not via another feature branch). If you don't follow this rule, the generated patch will occasionally incorrectly revert changes in CPython that you didn't intend to affect. (see http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/meta/issue428 for some background) |
The attached patch has been committed in 252e2aabc87a, and the wiki pages have been updated to link to the devguide. |
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