[Bioc-devel] Bug tracker for Bioconductor?

[Cook, Malcolm]

Martin,

I'm sure you're watching this thread.....

Can we take it as some "feedback from other developers" that you requested way back in https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioc-devel/2011-October/002854.html when I wished for similar....

In any case, 

+1,

Malcolm

 >-----Original Message-----
 >From: bioc-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:bioc-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Keith Hughitt
 >Sent: Friday, May 23, 2014 12:53 PM
 >To: Nicolas Delhomme
 >Cc: bioc-devel at r-project.org
 >Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Bug tracker for Bioconductor?
 >
 >Hi Nico,
 >
 >It's a shame that the effort did not gain more traction in 2004. I wonder
 >if things would look differently now as the community has grown
 >significantly larger?
 >
 >It does seem like there are a relatively small number of bug-related
 >questions on the mailing lists. I wonder though if this could be in part
 >because some people may be hesitant to ask their questions on such a large
 >list, and instead end up either forgoing the question or contacting the
 >software authors directly?
 >
 >Also, even if there is only a trickle of bug and feature-request related
 >posts to the mailing list across time, without any way to keep track of how
 >many of those issues are open/unresolved, it's hard to gauge whether the
 >project really is low-maintenance, or if there are actually a large number
 >of issues that have just been unanswered or forgotten.
 >
 >There would definitely be a burden associated with setting up a more
 >sophisticated system for dealing with bugs. I am just not convinced that
 >the burden would be too great, or that it is not worth taking on :)
 >
 >Cheers,
 >Keith
 >
 >
 >On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Nicolas Delhomme
 ><nicolas.delhomme at umu.se>wrote:
 >
 >> Hej Keith!
 >>
 >> I agree that this would be useful. For having been very close to the 2004
 >> attempt - a then colleague of mine set up a solution similar to what you
 >> describe - I can tell you that the main reason for it dying out was that
 >> despite advertising it, it never got widely used. I don’t know what the
 >> reasons for that really were, but from experience I know that many fellow
 >> bioinformaticians find such tools more time-consuming than  handling bug
 >> tracking through emails. And after all very few packages require frequent
 >> support, as can be devised from questions to the mailing list, so I do
 >> understand their point.
 >>
 >> Cheers,
 >>
 >> Nico
 >>
 >> ---------------------------------------------------------------
 >> Nicolas Delhomme
 >>
 >> The Street Lab
 >> Department of Plant Physiology
 >> Umeå Plant Science Center
 >>
 >> Tel: +46 90 786 5478
 >> Email: nicolas.delhomme at plantphys.umu.se
 >> SLU - Umeå universitet
 >> Umeå S-901 87 Sweden
 >> ---------------------------------------------------------------
 >>
 >> On 20 May 2014, at 15:04, Keith Hughitt <keith.hughitt at gmail.com> wrote:
 >>
 >> > Hello all,
 >> >
 >> > I was wondering if there had been any progress towards adopting a bug
 >> > tracking system for Bioconductor?
 >> >
 >> > It has been discussed at least a couple times in the past, e.g.:
 >> >
 >> >    - https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioc-devel/2011-October/002844.html
 >> >    - https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioc-devel/2004-October/000040.html
 >> >
 >> > But as far as I can tell, no such system has been set up and the current
 >> > approach is to report issues to the mailing list.
 >> >
 >> > The main reasons I see for adopting such a system would be:
 >> >
 >> > 1. Centralized location for reporting and tracking bugs and feature
 >> > requests; this also makes it more straight-forward to see if anyone else
 >> > has already reported a specific issue.
 >> >
 >> > 2. Ability to associate a given issue with specific a project
 >> >
 >> > 3. Ability to assign priorities to various issues and assign developers
 >> to
 >> > work on them.
 >> >
 >> > 4. Easy to track changes made to a given release.
 >> >
 >> > 5. Separate usage and development discussion (mailing list) for
 >> > issue-related discussion.
 >> >
 >> > Something like trac <http://trac.edgewall.org/> would be sufficient to
 >> > cover all of the above issues, although something with closer integration
 >> > to the codebase such as Github <https://github.com/> or
 >> > Bitbucket<https://bitbucket.org/>might provide some additional
 >> > benefits. Of course, migrating to a separate
 >> > VCS not a trivial matter and would itself merit a separate discussion.
 >> >
 >> > A couple examples of issue trackers working well for R projects:
 >> >
 >> >    https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2/issues
 >> >    https://github.com/yihui/knitr
 >> >
 >> > Thank you all for your excellent work on Bioconductor! It is a really
 >> > amazing resource.
 >> >
 >> > Regards,
 >> > Keith
 >> >
 >> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
 >> >
 >> > _______________________________________________
 >> > Bioc-devel at r-project.org mailing list
 >> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
 >>
 >>
 >
 >	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]