A way to indicate which bugs have been resolved?

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lporrel
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A way to indicate which bugs have been resolved?

Unread post by lporrel »

It would be great if the list of bugs in Bugs Reports could indicate which bugs have been resolved. A simple line-through would be terrific.
Leonard Porrello
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

A function like that is not supported by the forum software. You can always check the current status with the Check for Update function in the Help menu in Help & Manual. In addition to checking your update status it also displays the RSS feed with the update and fix status for all recent builds. If you have an RSS reader or RSS-enabled browser like Firefox or Opera you can also display the feed directly at this address:

http://www.ec-software.com/news/feed.xml
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SGIRA
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Forum may not be appropriate for Bug and RFC tracking

Unread post by SGIRA »

This begs the question of how bug reports and requests for change are tracked and responded to. Perhaps some other system would be better. Any suggestions from the user community?? Currently the forum is THE place to go as linked from helpand manual.com and includes a bug report section. However, it does not allow for other than posting a method of update/status, as well "forums" have quasi-formal implications. Ordering is also an issue, since all levels, old and new, are represented in bug and wishlist areas. These areas are in need of a better/more formal solution-oriented system IMHO. Any thoughts re: this ???
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Unread post by Tim Green »

The development team uses an internal bug tracking system and database, of course. However, even though it sometimes sounds like one 8) Help & Manual isn't an open-source project and the bug list is not currently open for public discussion. This may change in the future but the team has not yet reached a decision on the best way to do this, and since the main priority at the moment is development work on Project Hydra (H&M 5) it will probably be a while before something changes here.
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SGIRA
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Unread post by SGIRA »

I completely understand the product is not Open Source. However, for very good reasons, you do have a large user base utilizing this product in their workplaces.

When it comes to wish-list items, we are on the same page. Though a "product road-map" would be a professional way to show what may be expected/considered for the future. This kind of thing aids in the decision process as a company commits (or not) to a product like this one. I know it is impossible to please everyone as well.

Bugs are a different matter. We in the business world have to commit as to when problems can/will be fixed. Severe heat is generated when all we can say is that it has been reported, no status available. Or a new release is available and no way to tell in advance if problematic issues have been fixed, other than "Some changes made to ....." on the web site. It is notable that real "stoppers" have been adddressed in a more-than-timely manner to date(props).

I think a great deal of this product and those I have have had contact with so far. I would really like to see it reach its potential across the world. These comments are intended as food-for-thought and discussion, not harsh criticism.

Bottom line, thanks for the very-good things you all do.
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Unread post by Tim Green »

I understand the need for an official bug list. This is going to be implemented in FogBugz and made public in the near future, hang in there... :)
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SGIRA
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Unread post by SGIRA »

Any progress with FogBugz since 2007 ??
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Tickler

Unread post by SGIRA »

Any progress with FogBugz since 2007 ??
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Unread post by Tim Green »

This is unfortunately now outdated because FogBugz turned out to be a lot less useful than we had hoped. Among other things, you can't really use it to post a public bug and resolution list without purchasing a separate account for every user who wants to access it. In addition to this it was horribly clunky to use and none of the programmers wanted to use it.

For the time being we are going to continue to post resolved issue lists with every update.
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mreith
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Unread post by mreith »

Tim,

What version of FogBugz were you using? I have version 6.1 and there is a Release Notes report that will give you bug and feature resolution report. You can then export this report in XML or HTML and post that to a public location or use it in your docs.

Out of curiosity (and if you have time) what did your developers find clunky about FogBugz? I have used it for a very small project but was curious if it would scale to a larger project.

Thanks,

Mike
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,
mreith wrote:I have version 6.1 and there is a Release Notes report that will give you bug and feature resolution report.
That's interesting to hear, maybe they listened to us... :) We definitely weren't using 6, I think it was 5 or possibly even 4.

The problem wasn't that it didn't scale, AFAIK there are no problems there, more that the interface and filtering options were counter-intuitive, although powerful, and everyone trying it out got tired of struggling with it very quickly.

In addition to this the email support was restrictive -- for example you could import support email to FogBugz but it wasn't possible to leave the mails on the server if you were using POP and there was no support at all for IMAP. This meant that you immediately had to commit your entire support email to the care of FogBugz before you had a chance to test the system properly, and that wasn't something we would have considered doing.

Then there was the integrated user forum: This was too simple and restrictive and there was no interface to full-featured forum systems like phpBB or vBulletin. I would have been happy to switch to another forum system if an interface and import options had been available, but switching to the minimal integrated forum in FogBugz simply wasn't an option.

We were all very busy at the time we tried it out, and these stumbling blocks just proved to be too much and we moved on to other things. We'll probably have another look at the new version when we find the time.
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Unread post by mreith »

Tim,

Well, their forums are still pretty anemic as is their wiki. But there are some nice things about the actual bug tracking system. I'm still now sure that I would use it for a large product; but for what I am working on it is fairly nice.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts,

Mike
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Unread post by KazMax »

With respect to the original posters query about seeing what has been fixed and what hasn't. I use the VbCity forums occasionally:

http://www.vbcity.com/forums/default.asp?area=dotnet

The method that is in common use there is that when an issue is resolved the original poster edits the subject line of the post and adds 'Resolved'.

Clearly this arrangement does involve a little overhead on the part of those using the forums, and you can't actually enforce the responses. But perhaps it could be at least a partial solution?

Andrew
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Andrew,

You're right, this does need to be a little better organized on the forum. :?
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