[Nexus-developers] NeXus Bug Reporting Database (bugzilla)

[Akeroyd, FA (Freddie)]

I mentioned at the recent meeting that I would be willing to set up a
"bugzilla" bugs server for NeXus
as part of  http://bugs.isis.rl.ac.uk/ - for more information on what
bugzilla can do see http://www.bugzilla.org/about.html 
and http://bugs.isis.rl.ac.uk/isisbugs.html 

The user interfaces for submitting and querying are customisable and can be
made as easy or as hard as we required - 
we just need to decide on what information we need to be submitted. The
first stage of setting up the server is to decide how 
we should divide bugs into categories. 

Each bug or issue has an associated "product" and a subdivision of this
("component")
For example, if we took the product as "NeXus" some components might be:

- Classes and Definitions (contents of NeXus classes, instrument definition
schema, file validation)
- Programming (use of the NeXus programming interface, NAPI)
- Documentation
- Installation
- General (anything else)

Or we could have "nexus instrument definitions" as a separate product, with
each definition being a component
and use bugzilla to provide a mechnism for people to comment and discuss
things etc. All the bugs are stored in the database with a 
unique id, so you can always create a component later and move bugs into it.
When choosing the division, the following 
also needs to be taken into account:

- security is "product" based: if you want to restrict who can submit or see
bugs, you do this at the product level.  
- the default person initially assigned to resolve a bug, and any additional
people who are automatically emailed on a bug submission, is 
  based on the component; thus some organisations may define components
based on responsibility/interest grounds.

once a bug/enhancement request is submitted, an unlimited number of
additional comments can be appended as it is worked on and anybody
else can add themselves to the list of people who should be informed of
changes.

Comments or suggestions welcomed,

Freddie

P.S. apologies if some of you get this twice, but I was unable to determine
the contents of the "nexus-developers" list (i sent the list
        interface a "review" command, but it returned me nothing)