launchpadplugin is outdated and doesn't work with modern versions of Bugzilla

[Scarlett Gately Moore]

I tried to get KDE sysadmin to implement the launchpad plugin on bugs.kde.org and was denied due to

"I'm afraid that plugin is designed for an absolutely ancient version of Bugzilla, specifically 3.0 and 3.2. To put that in context, we're running Bugzilla 5.0.6.

We're therefore not going to be able to deploy that plugin i'm afraid as Bugzilla was extensively rewritten as part of the move to Bugzilla 4.0 which makes it incompatible (the upgrade to that was rather bumpy, and Sysadmin had to make a number of hacks to the code of Bugzilla at the time to keep Dr Konqi working as back then it relied on scraping the web interface - and the new Bugzilla was radically different).

Not sure why such a plugin would still be required in the modern era as Bugzilla has a rather reasonable REST based XML-RPC and JSON-RPC API with Bugzilla 5.

Code wise it last saw activity in 2009/2010 - which doesn't inspire much confidence either.
Normally for something like this I would look at what the other side is doing, but alas Launchpad is closed source, so it isn't possible to tell what is happening on their side.

Finally, looking at the code of the plugin itself the licensing is somewhat questionable:

# The contents of this file are subject to the Mozilla Public
# License Version 1.1 (the "License"); you may not use this file
# except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
# the License at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
#
# Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS
# IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or
# implied. See the License for the specific language governing
# rights and limitations under the License.
#
# The Original Code is the Bugzilla Launchpad Plugin.
#
# The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Canonical Ltd.
# Portions created by Canonical are Copyright (C) 2008 Canonical Ltd.
# All Rights Reserved.
#
# Contributor(s): Bradley Baetz <email address hidden>
# Elliotte Martin <email address hidden>

It says that it is MPL licensed (like the rest of Bugzilla) but then says that the portions created by Canonical are all rights reserved (aka proprietary). That makes the licensing of the code somewhat ambiguous at best."

Are there any plans on updating this plugin?

[Jürgen Gmach (jugmac00)]

The plugin which is talked about here lives at https://launchpad.net/bugzilla-launchpad

> but alas Launchpad is closed source

That is not true. You can have a look at the source code in this very project you have filed this ticket:
https://code.launchpad.net/launchpad

> Are there any plans on updating this plugin?

Before we talk about updating plugins...

Could you please outline what your goal is? Is it about bugs.kde.org to interact with Launchpad? Link bugs? Or get status updates? Or to monitor bugs on that tracker in Launchpad?

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

Hi,
Sorry, those were the words of my sysadmin. I will enlighten him of the source code, but unfortunately the outdated part still remains. My goal with my Kubuntu hat on is that we need to track Plasma 5.27 bugs ( and hopefully all KDE ) in launchpad with the lovely two way communication as described here: https://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/BugzillaPlugin

[Jürgen Gmach (jugmac00)]

Scarlett, we are very much supportive of community engagement.

That said, of the current Launchpad staff nobody worked on the bugzilla integration before, and as I understood, it is not about a Launchpad change, but due to an updated API on bugzilla's side.

I am afraid, in this cycle (aligned with the Ubuntu releases), we cannot allocate time to work on that, though I will reach out to my manager to discuss whether we could work on that in the next cycle, starting mid May.

Things would look different if somebody from the (KDE-) community could have a look how to update that plugin. I'd be more than happy to review a merge proposal.

[Clinton Fung (clinton-fung)]

Can you share the steps you've followed, and how you went about configuring bug tracking? Was this something you were researching and came across in our https://help.launchpad.net documentation? If so; apologies for that.

From the above, it sounds like you'd like to configure bugs.kde.org as an external bug tracker on Launchpad. You can do this without needing to wrangle the (very very obsolete) plugin mentioned earlier.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/bugtrackers/kde-bugs

To do this, you can:
1. Go to your project's page (e.g. https://launchpad.net/plasma-desktop)
2. Click on the Bugs tab (which takes you to https://bugs.launchpad.net/plasma-desktop)
3. Click on "Configure Bugs" (which takes you to https://bugs.launchpad.net/plasma-desktop/+configure-bugtracker)
4. Select "In a registered bug tracker"
5. Populate the kde-bugs tracker
6. Populate your project ID
7. Click "Change" to save your changes

Please can you try this and let us know how you get on?

[KDE (kde-community)]

It went fine until #5. I do not see anywhere an option to populate kde-bugs or #6 populate your project ID

[Clinton Fung (clinton-fung)]

By #5 I meant click on the magnifying glass icon which opens a modal dialog in which you can search for "kde-bugs" and select it.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

Duh. Right, so there is the link Bugs are tracked in https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/bugtrackers/kde-bugs
I click on that expecting to see plasmashell bugs but I get all bugs for every project listed. I don't see a way to even sort them. Or am I missing something?

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

Hello!

> I am afraid, in this cycle (aligned with the Ubuntu releases), we cannot allocate time to work on that, though I will reach out to my manager to discuss whether we could work on that in the next cycle, starting mid May.

I certainly think this is worthy of being solved as soon as the Launchpad team can fit it in. We are fully understanding of the fact that Launchpad has a lot of work to be done, and we appreciate the work your team *can* put in.

Regardless, KDE bugs are something three of the ten Ubuntu flavors need to track. The rationale for a sense of urgency here is, once KDE Plasma 5 becomes EOL upstream, they no longer track related bugs there (which will happen before the LTS.) We will now be responsible for tracking these bugs downstream. We are prepared for this, just need the appropriate "buttons to push" in Launchpad.

I do apologize, on behalf of Kubuntu, for making our lack of preparation an emergency on your part. This is not sustainable, and not how we want to do this long-term. That being said, I would ask you to show this message to your manager, so there is a better understanding of what we are trying to accomplish here.

I hope this helps! I would be happy to help solve this in any way I can.

Thank you. :)

[Guruprasad (lgp171188)]

> once KDE Plasma 5 becomes EOL upstream, they no longer track related bugs there (which will happen before the LTS.) We will now be responsible for tracking these bugs downstream. We are prepared for this, just need the appropriate "buttons to push" in Launchpad.

Hi Scarlett and Simon, can you provide us more details about what additional features that you are looking to get from this plugin? Launchpad already has and supports watching and linking to bugs on external bugzilla instances and that doesn't require a plugin.

I ask this because this plugin was last updated ~15 years ago and has been unmaintained since then for all these years and is older than Plasma 5 itself.

What additional features in Launchpad do you need to track these bugs downstream? Can you elaborate.

The plugin is written in Perl, a language that the Launchpad team isn't that familiar with and considering the time that has passed, it might be worth rewriting the plugin from scratch.

We need to discuss this internally to figure if and when we can work on this. While we do this, we are open to accepting contributions from the community on this and will be happy to provide relevant inputs and guidance from the Launchpad side.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

Hi there,
I have worked around the problem by tracking all my bugs linking them in one project thus triggering the watches. I would like to leave this open as the features still sound more optimal than this. If you can achieve this without needing the upstreams to install plugins even better. My sysadmin doesn't do things without much convincing.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

share comment histories between bugs that are tracked both in your Bugzilla tracker and also in Launchpad

Is one feature that intrigued me.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

Plugin for two-way comms
Comment importing
Comment pushing
Bug importing
Bug forwarding

Here are the features the plugin provided. Of them my most desired would be the bug importing and bug forwarding.