[GLLUG] Subversion & Bug Tracking Panel

[Ed Thomson]

Hi Clay-

I've been meaning to introduce myself to the mailing list for a while  
now, but work's been ridiculously busy lately.  I've been to a few  
GLLUG meetings since I moved up here, so I've met some of you.  You  
probably know me as the evil Mac user, but I still use Linux at home  
and on all my servers, so hopefully that makes me at least a bit less  
evil.

Anyway, my day job happens to be writing source control software, so  
you've sparked my interest.


So what's cool to me about the version control / bug tracking markets  
right now is that they're becoming increasingly focused on  
integration and cohesiveness.  The emphasis is really on ALM software  
- or whatever buzzword the marketing guys want to attach to that -  
and it would be really interesting to see how free software can  
tackle some of this integration.

That is to say that if subversion could be really well coupled with a  
bug tracking system and a continuous integration system, that would  
be a cool presentation.  In fact, this is my favorite trade show and  
presentation demo.  What I normally do is something like this:

Make a random change to some file in the source tree that would cause  
a compile error.  Check in this change, and marking a bug as fixed in  
this revision of the tree.  At this point, our continuous integration  
system (in our case, CruiseControl) kicks off a new build.  Once the  
build fails, that bug that was associated with the bad checkin is  
reopened with a note that the build failed and with the build log  
attached.

It's admittedly a contrived example, but it's something most people  
can identify with as most of us have worked with That Guy who refuses  
to actually test his code (or sometimes even compile it) before  
checking it in.  Reaction to this demo ranges from delighted shock to  
a head nod and a smile, mostly depending on how awful the version  
control tools they're using are.


This sort of integration happens less with the open source issue  
trackers.  SubIssue looks like it will provide a nice integration  
between bugs and checkins, but it also looks like it might never get  
out of the gate.

But I think that you could at least increase the integration with svn  
and a random bug tracker a bit.  I suspect you could write some svn  
commit hooks that would examine the comment and look for some well- 
defined tag that instructs your commit hook to update a bug  
appropriately.  That way I can say something like "<Bug id:1454  
state:resolved>" in the comment to mark bug 1454 as resolved as of  
this new revision of the source tree.  It would then mark the bug as  
resolved, and maybe update the comment that it was modified as of  
revision 1454.

(Ideally, the bug tracking system could also create links to a  
repository browser for that revision.)

To continue the integration, your continuous integration software  
could, when builds or tests fail, go search for all bugs marked as  
fixed in the changeset that it just checked out and mark them as  
resolution denied or reopen them or whatever.


Don't know if I'm way off-base or not.  Maybe this seems like an  
arbitrary thing to be so excited about - and it might be.  (If so, I  
apologize, and would suggest that I'm suffering from a sort of  
programmer's Stockholm Syndrome, where I've fallen in love with these  
things because I'm bound to them.)

Cheers-

-Ed

--
Ed Thomson <ethomson at edwardthomson.com>

On Mar 1, 2007, at 2:18 PM, Clay Dowling wrote:

> I'm one of the presenters for a panel on subversion and bug  
> tracking at
> Penguicon.  It occurs to me that I don't necessarily know what  
> people are
> interested in learning about the subject.  So let me put it to the  
> group
> here:  What would you like to learn about the use of subversion and  
> bug
> tracking?  The other presenter has some material about the use of  
> these
> tools as part of a Continuous Integration process.  Is there anything
> about the Continuous Integration development process that you'd  
> like to
> know about?
>
> Clay
> -- 
> Simple Content Management
> http://www.ceamus.com
>
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