Re: "Exotic" GNATS 4 fields

[Juhan Leemet]

On Monday 01 October 2001 19:56, Dirk Bergstrom wrote:
> > "Cases" (I have found no explanation of what it is for)
>
> i've never seen this one.  can't imagine what it's good for.  maybe it's
> similar to Related-PRs, which is a better name anyways.

I suspect it is for "incidents", i.e. Related-PRs (not quite as precise).

> > "Keywords" (which seem to have little use as long as there
> > aren't any tools
> > for indexing the GNATS database apart from gen-index which
> > doesn't seem to have anything to do with this field)
>
> as a former librarian, i'd argue for keeping this field.  as a current
> gnats 4.0 administrator, i can't argue quite so strongly -- only about
> 30% of our PR database has data in the keywords field.  however, i think
> it would be good to encourage people to use this field...

Currently (last 3 years) doing a configuration management contract for a 
client, I'm inclined to agree that we should keep it, even if not widely or 
often used. Keywords have always been a problem for HelpDesk and problem 
reporting/tracking systems. Most approaches depend on you putting them in as 
you go, and you cannot retrieve based on what is not there. Hard to apply 
keywords consistently or completely, retroactively, and yet...

OTOH, Keyword (if one is using it) might be more precise than doing a full 
text search. Since this is an "edited" field, by that I mean that someone 
intentionally selects a few keywords (as opposed to random selection of 
whatever words were used), it could be very useful.

One idea that I have been mulling over, but have not used yet, is an approach 
like IBM's Orthogonal Defect Classification scheme (ODC), for analyzing 
problem injection/source viz. methodology. The Keyword field could be a good 
place to put in the various classification parameters, instead of having to 
customize and/or modify the gnats system.

If interested, see the concept paper on IBM ODC:
http://www.chillarege.com/odc/articles/odcconcept/odc.html

If this kind of thing catches on in the industry, one might want custom 
field(s) for the ODC classification parameters. For now, Keywords would be 
good enough.

> > "Quarter" (Not exactly sure what this is -- target quarter for a fix?)
>
> i've never understood this one -- i always figured it was a legacy
> thing.  if it's not a standard field in 3.x, i see no reason to have it
> in 4.0.

dunno either?

> > "Release-Note"
>
> our developers fill this out for every non-confidential PR, and the
> documentation folks use the info to prepare the published release notes.
> it's a pretty useful field...

Again, as configuration manager, I would like to see this kind of thing. The 
question I would have is whether this should come from the PR system or a 
versioning system? I guess a PR system is better, since each versioned object 
might have different comments. Has anyone integrated gnats with CVS?

In a previous project, we used to extract the differences in versions and all 
related comments from all objects, and mash them together (with scripts) for 
our release notes for a maintenance release or update. Because some fixes 
"touched" many items, there was a fair bit of redundancy. Getting release 
notes from a PR could be easier, and also more succinct.

-- 
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.