on bug page, show if PPA upload fixes the bug

[Daniel Holbach]

It'd be great if an upload to PPA which includes (LP: #XXXXXX) in the changes file
 - was shown on XXXXXX's bug page
 - added a new comment, so subscribers were aware of the proposed bug fix
 - was query-able through http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppafixes or by means of a search option in the "advanced search"

[LaserJock (laserjock)]

Is this something we really want? I would tend to think this could lead to confusing and messy situations. I would think users would get a little confused. Are you wanting to use PPAs for sponsorship processes?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Please $DEITY, No. If someone is going to the trouble to mention an LP bug number in a PPA changelog, I suspect they are quite capable of commenting in the bug when it's ready. Personally, this would make life harder for me, not easier.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Jordan: no, it's not about sponsoring.
Scott: please elaborate why exactly this makes your life harder.

Think of bugs like bug 202174. A new upstream version (that needs testing) is likely to fix a bunch of old issues.

1) It's important we point out to subscribers of one of those bugs: there's a fix available in PPA for testing (without the developer having to add a comment to a bunch of bugs individually).
2) Tools like http://daniel.holba.ch/really-fix-it ought to be able to find out ALL the fixes available in form of
 - fixes that life somewhere upstream
 - attached patches in bug reports
 - debdiffs in the sponsoring queue
 - branches suggested for merging
 - PPA uploads
 - etc.

I like our sponsoring process but I don't want to miss out on bug fixes that might have ended up somewhere else.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Because currently if I'm doing something that I think needs a PPA test upload, I upload to the PPA with everything except the version number ready for upload to the archive. When I want the PPA upload mentioned in the bug (to solicit testing for example), I mark up the bug with appropriate instructions.

If you make this change then I have to leave LP numbers out of the PPA upload and remember to add them again later when I haven't worked on it for a while and probably have to spend a few minutes hunting them up. If bug fixes in PPA uploads are ready for review, then people will either upload them or submit them to the sponsoring process. I can't imagine someone knows enough to get the LP foo correct in debian/changelog, but not enough to attach a debdiff to a bug.

All this really benifits is your pet project. I see no benifits outside that.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

What's wrong with having a PPA upload connected with a bug? It adds information to the bug that you're working on it. We can still talk about the specifics (is a mail sent out or not, where is it to be shown, etc.) - I still don't see why you would want to avoid having that information available.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I don't see the need. It's just more clutter. More information stuffed
into a bug isn't always better.

[LaserJock (laserjock)]

Well, I do see benefits for some corner cases, however I don't really see how this would be generally useful and could be detrimental as often as it would be helpful. A PPA upload can be done by anybody and there's absolutely no way for the user to really tell if it's a good package or not. As Scott said, if an uploader can't be bothered to comment on the bugs with specific testing instructions, etc. I don't know that it's a good idea to announce the package to users. We also sponsor debdiffs, not PPA packages, so I think it would tend to cause confusion.

As far as tools like really-fix-it, shouldn't it find that info from PPAs themselves rather than bug reports? Perhaps Launchpad could take the Closes LP: info and turn it into a list somewhere? That I can see as useful.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I don't see "more information" or "no way to see how credible a LP user is" as an argument against registering the connection between a bug and an upload to PPA. This is not about the sponsoring process, it's just that there's currently not a lot of integration between PPA and the rest of Launchpad.

A lot of work happens in PPAs, a lot of work happens in bzr branches. Having the connection between all of them gives a much better overview over what's happening.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Having thought about it some more I realised where my desire for more integration stemmed from. I've seen an uptake in the use of PPA by lots of people outside of ubuntu-dev or ubuntu-universe-contributors. Some upstreams use it already to generate updated packages of their software and so on.

I see the benefit of not duplicating work if we're notified about "upload xyz deals with bug abc".

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I'm not opposed to integration, I'm opposed to it being automatic. It
takes a manual action to add the LP foo to a changelog and I'd expect that
if there isn't also a bug comment, there is likely a reason.

If you need a list for really-fix-it, then, as Jordan said, have LP make a
list, but that doesn't need a bug comment.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Additionally, while I think PPAs have valid uses, I think we (Ubuntu)
should encourage people to live in the Ubuntu repositories and not use
third party repositories.

This kind of automatic linking will encourage users to use unauthenicated
repositories of unknown quality. Recall that by policy we ask upstreams
not to ship a debian dir because, for one reason, they usually aren't very
good.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Scott: Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean in comment 10? How do you think it should work?

I'm 100% for having good fixes in Ubuntu, we should be notified of uploads that are supposed to fix bugs though, because there are a lot of people using PPA who are not living in the ubuntu-dev world.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I'd imagine something like a table of links to PPA uploads with debian
changelog entries purporting to fix bugs with an Ubuntu task that's not Fix
released. Maybe the url would be:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/bugs/+fixes

This should support your requirements for really-fix-it.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

That sounds good.

It'd be great if it additionally ended up in the bug report itself - just like branches do (cf bug 215207 for an example). If it was in the /+text pages (https://bugs.launchpad.net/five-a-day/+bug/215207/+text as an example) we could alter python-launchpad-bugs to easily extract that information too.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I was just thinking having PPAs linked to a bug, like bzr branches, would be useful for finding bugs that may have a fix. So one could look for:

Bugs with a ppa
Bugs with bzr branches
Bugs with patches

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Right, just make sure not to go back to actually marking the bug fixed.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I still don't like the idea of automatically cluttering the bugs directly.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I'd be fine with it if it was similar to linking a branch.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Perhaps this bug and bug 179873 could both be fixed by making a PPA package one of the things that a bug can affect. Then if a PPA package fixes a bug, you could mark the bug as affecting the PPA package but already Fixed there.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

I agree with mpt's assessment here. That bug is also far more likely to get work done on it as part of the daily builds project.