[Zope-Coders] Collector Status Meanings

[Ken Manheimer]

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004, Chris Withers wrote:

> Ken Manheimer wrote:
> >   Pending: Issues that have not yet been settled or assigned to some
> >            supporter, and warrant attention.
> > 
> >            Your description, "issues that haven't been considered", 
> >            assumes that issues are always assigned or settled when they
> >            are examined, while i think some issues can remain in the 
> >            pending state awaiting resource availability.
> 
> Yep, I agree with this, sorry clumsy wording on my part. How does the 
> current version looked?

Not right.  An issue may have been processed to hell and back and then
wound up back in pending - eg, someone may have taken responsibility for
it and then realized they couldn't do it, and found noone else to assign 
to it.  The point is that it is awaiting disposition.  You can add 
something about the fact that there can be a bunch of history associated 
with it (from prior "processing"), and information added while still in 
pending.

> >   Accepted: Issues that some supporter(s) has responsibility for resolving
> >             it, and it is not yet resolved.
> > 
> >             Your description says that some supporter has assessed the 
> >             issue as warranting repair, and later says that the the issue 
> >             has an assigned supporter.  I think it's a lot clearer to
> >             directly say that an accepted issue has a supporter 
> >             responsible for resolving it.
> 
> I don't see any difference in meaning here, other than sentence 
> structure. I think I split things because sometimes someone will assign 
> themselves, and then do nothing on the issue for several years ;-)

See my message to fred.  The essential thing, as far as i'm concerned, is 
that acceptance fundamentally entails having someone responsible for the 
issue.  Your framing obscures this.  (I gather, from the message of 
fred's to which i am responding, that this point is not so obvious, and 
understanding it can help people understand the collector workflow.)

> >   Rejected: Issues that are settled as being somehow invalid or outside 
> >             the scope of the system the collector serves.
> 
> I think we agree here too...

I would rephrase it, but include the additional exposition.

> >   Resolved: Issues that are settled as having been solved.
> 
> Indeed. But issues are rejected unless they require chanes to the Zope 
> core. My notes are meant to ensure people put in appropriate messages 
> when the yresolve issues.

Maybe i should have said "Relevant issues that are settled...".  I like 
having your prods to include relevant information/tests/etc.

> >   Deferred: Issues that are not assigned or settled but warrant revisiting
> >             at some later occasion.  This enables, for instance, putting
> >             an issue aside until more information is collected.
> 
> But this is a trap! All it means is that issues get burried and never 
> looked at again, whether they're resolved or not. As I said, I'm 
> explicitly changing the meaning of this state rather than adding a new 
> one because:

As i mentioned in my response to fred, the alternative is either to leave 
it pending, where it can obscure other truly pending issues, or mark it as 
accepted without a responsible party, which i think can nullify the 
usefulness of the collector.  I agree with chris, deferred can languish, 
but at least there's a clue about that danger.

> 1. This state is useless in terms of what it achieves, as-is ;-)
>     Witness all the activity today from me going through the deferred
>     issues, most of which had been that way for in excess of a year!

I can see keeping things in pending if they need doing and are awaiting 
someone available to take responsibility, and putting things in deferred 
that either aren't so needed but would be worth doing, provided resource 
availability, or are awaiting further input.  I would rather not see 
pending cluttered with either of those.

> 2. Andreas and I need a state which says "this issue is on last warning"
>     once we've asked people for more info, so we can easilly come back in
>     a months time and find all said issues and reject them unless people
>     have provided the required information.

Deferred doesn't preclude using it for that.  Ideally, the collector would
have provide some "revisit" date (maybe it would promote the issue back to
pending on that date).

> >   Wontfix: Issues that are settled as ones that won't be fixed.  These
> >            issues are within the scope of the collector, but would
> >            require more effort than they're worth.  (Sustained lack of a 
> >            champion who will take responsibility for solving the issue
> >            is one sign of that.)
> 
> I've tightened this a bit, 'cos I don't want people using wontfix as the 
> bin they abused deferred for ;-)
> 
> I'd prefer to have long-standing pending issues rather than forgotten 
> wontfix'ers...

I think you mean "forgotten deferred's".  And obviously, i don't agree 
about the abuse of deferred.

ken
klm at zope.com