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To: internals@lists.php.net,Joe Watkins <pthreads@pthreads.org>
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Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2017 08:09:48 +0100
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Subject: Re: bugsnet cleanup
From: sobak@php.net (Maciej Sobaczewski)

Hi Joe,

W dniu 08.01.2017 o 07:46, Joe Watkins pisze:
> Morning internals,
>
> Some of you may have noticed that a few of us have put considerable effort
> into cleanup of pull requests on github, these are now manageable and I'm
> quite confident that we will be able to merge pull requests in a timely
> manner, and stay on top of it.

Great job on cleaning up Pull Requests. I was really impressed to see
it dropping down from over 300 to about ~140.

> When it comes to bugsnet, there are feature requests and bugs that have
> been open for more than 10 years, and nobody has talked about them in about
> as long, they may concern defunct versions of PHP, or removed extensions or
> SAPIs: These numbers in the thousands.

Definitely, there was a similiar initiative about 2 years ago IIRC and
I think that cleaning up the bugtracker is always a good thing(tm). I
wasn't able to help with pull requests  due to the lack of PHP internal
knowledge, but I would be able to help a little with bug reports.

>
> It's very difficult (impossible) to see a good reason for these to be open,
> they are not useful at all.
>
> With normal support for 5 ended, now is the perfect time to cleanup
> bugsnet. If we can get the numbers down to something manageable, we have a
> reasonable expectation to stay on top of them.
>
> I think anyone that has been waiting a number of years for a response to a
> feature request deserves to know that it is not reasonably happening, and
> that there are better ways of trying to get a feature in than opening
> yet-another-feature-request on bugsnet.
>
> I think any bug report opened against 4 and not updated is useless.
>
> I think anything with a patch attached targeting 5 is useless, regardless
> of age; they should be encouraged to open a pull request on github against
> a supported branch.
>
> I'd like to hear what others think about cleaning up bugsnet, what criteria
> we might use for a mass cleanup.

I would basically close (probably "Suspend", to be more precise) each of
Feature Requests related to the PHP itself. It's not really used anymore
and if I'm right we rather prefer direct mail on php.internals and/or
pull request.

I even thought about disallowing new "Feature Requests" completely and
adding a message that bug tracker is not a suitable place anymore. This,
on the other hand, might be still used for other project types.

I can handle Feature Requests if you're OK with that, I think it should
help a little.

> After a mass cleanup, I/we will go in and start working through whatever is
> left, but 5k mostly irrelevant bugs is too much to ask, it would take me
> months and months to work through those, time that nobody has, or will ever
> have.
>
> Cheers
> Joe
>

Thanks,
Maciej.