Debian Bug report logs - #129781
bugs.debian.org: BTS needs support for bug dependencies/blocking

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: bugs.debian.org: BTS needs support for bug dependencies/blocking

Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 02:35:25 -0500

Package: bugs.debian.org
Version: N/A; reported 2002-01-18
Severity: wishlist

Reassign to debbugs if necessary.

The BTS should support a mechanism to say "this bug can't be fixed until
this other bug, over here, is fixed" (another way to express this is
"this bug is blocking a fix of this other bug"; the info can be entered
in two different ways conceivably). This info should be displayed when
you look at a bug, so you can see the list of other bugs it is blocking,
and the list of bugs that are blocking it. Other modern BTS's support
this kind of thing, and it would be very useful for Debian too. Some
sample uses:

- Perhaps the most common is the obvious case, a bug in package A can't
  be fixed until something is done with package B. Maybe package A needs
  to be upgraded to a new upstream version, but cannot be until B is
  also upgraded, or whatever.
- Bug dependencies can be used to group together bugs we need to fix to
  complete some larger task. For example, all RC bugs in base packages are
  blocking the task of freezing standard (eg, it depends on those bugs),
  which might be a bug on ftp.debian.org or something similar. Or a while
  ago, we could have set all the bugs about files in /usr/doc to block a
  "debian violates FHS with /usr/doc" bug filed on general. This may eclipse
  most of what tags can do (and some of what severity levels are being used
  for), in a much more flexible, open-ended way.
- And it can be used for bugs within a single package too of course.
  Probably a lot of things that are currently tagged wontfix are just
  waiting on some larger issue to be resolved in their package. I know I
  could use this to good effect on my packages anyway.

I think making this information explicit in the bug tracking system
would lead to some useful changes in the way we look at bugs; seeing
that some random bug on your package is preventing 10 other bugs on
other packages from being fixed can be a good motivator. Probably more
motivating than receiving yet another falsely grave bug report anyway.

I don't think this will be significantly harder to implement than tags
were. There are plenty of possibilities for interesting wrinkles like
graphing bug dependency trees that could be done later, but it really
just comes down to adding a new field for this data to the bug info
files, probably adding another one of those nasty indexes I've heard
about, and updating the control bot and the CGI's to manipulate and
display the new field.

Message #10 received at 129781@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: 129781@bugs.debian.org

Subject: patch for bug dependencies

Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:17:40 -0500

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Here's a patch to implement bug dependencies. The patch adds two new
fields to the summary files, Blocks and Blocked-By. This information
(should be) kept in sync between blocker and blockee, so only one
summary file needs to be read to determine what bugs a given bug is
blocking, and which ones are blocking it.

The control interface gets a new "blocks" command, which can be used to
tell which bugs a given bug blocks, which is modeled on the tags
command. So:

blocks 10 19 18 17
blocks 10 - 19
blocks 10 = 11

Bugs cannot be merged unless their Blocks and Blocks-By fields are in
the same state. I hope that won't turn out to be *too* annoying. The
alternatives I considered seemed to lead to some bad cases.

Limitations include:

 - does not check for cycles
 - only adds blocking data to bug report pages, not index pages

I've tested this lightly, and I doubt that any coding bugs will express
themselves outside of, at worst, bad data in the new fields, so I hope
this will an easy patch to accept.

-- 
see shy jo

[bugdeps.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

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Message #15 received at 129781@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: 129781@bugs.debian.org

Subject: todo still

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:08:40 -0500

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

This patch still needs a bit of work:

      * deep listing of blocks
      * sort lists so merging works
      * look into merging blockin info in merge ops
      * cloning blockers/blockees needs to update the fields of the other bugs

At least the secod and fourth of these are necessary before deployment.

-- 
see shy jo

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Message #20 received at 129781@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: 129781@bugs.debian.org

Subject: version 2 of the patch

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:59:34 -0500

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Attached patch (to be applied after the first one) has these
improvements:

 - sort blocking data fields so merge works
 - fix merge check for Blocked-By fields
 - fix cloning of bugs that are blockers or blocked
 - deal properly with changing blocking status of sets of merged bugs

-- 
see shy jo

[bugdeps2.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

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Message #25 received at 129781-submitter@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>

To: 129781-submitter@bugs.debian.org

Subject: bug blocking

Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:43:03 -0400

Is bug blocking implemented?  If so, the only thing missing is
documentation.

Justin

Message #30 received at 129781-quiet@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>, 129781-quiet@bugs.debian.org

Cc: 129781-submitter@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#129781: bug blocking

Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:13:59 -0400

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Justin Pryzby wrote:
> Is bug blocking implemented?  If so, the only thing missing is
> documentation.

My original patch implementing blocking included a patch to the
documentation.

-- 
see shy jo

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Message #38 received at 129781-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>

To: 129781-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#129781: bugs.debian.org: BTS needs support for bug dependencies/blocking

Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 14:25:33 +1000

> My original patch implementing blocking included a patch to the
> documentation.

Which is now applied (more or less), along with the actual
implementation. This might take a little while to actually show up on
the website. Bug closed with this message.

Cheers,
aj

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