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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I misstated this: "Show me all current
blockers". Really I'd like a way to "Show me all current blockers
that are not themselves currently blocked".<br>
<br>
On 2/26/2023 7:59 PM, Robert William Vesterman wrote:<br>
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This may be somewhat crazy, but I've never been satisfied with any
of the todo/task management apps that I know of, mostly because of
a single common issue that they all suffer from (in my opinion),
and it suddenly occurred to me a few minutes ago that the typical
bug-tracking app could be massaged into being a todo/task
management app that does <i>not </i>suffer from this. So, I'm
now wondering whether there are any <i>different</i> reasons that
this wouldn't be a good use case for Bugzilla (or something like
it). As background, I've used Bugzilla to actually report bugs on
various projects, but I've never used it running on my own server,
or to work on bugs that someone has reported.<br>
<br>
To back up a bit, the issue that I'm referring to is that it
always seems like relations between tasks can only be structured
as trees (well, forests, really): Any particular task can have at
most one parent task. For me, it always seems much more natural to
be able to have multiple parents for a single task (i.e. the tasks
should form an acyclic directed graph, not necessarily a forest).<br>
<br>
For a contrived example: In real life, the "Bake a cake" task
depends upon the "Buy flour" task, which depends upon the "Go
grocery shopping" task. Typical todo/task apps can handle this
just fine, insofar as described. But the problem comes up when you
realize that going grocery shopping can be a dependence for a
whole bunch of things completely unrelated to baking a cake (e.g.
buying Liquid Plumber), while at the same time in the other
direction, baking a cake can be dependent upon a whole bunch of
things completely unrelated to going grocery shopping (e.g. fixing
the oven).<br>
<br>
I realize that there are workarounds for this sort of thing - e.g.
allowing a task to have arbitrary "tags", or making multiple
in-app tasks all meaning "Bake a cake", but these always seem very
kludgy to me, and I can't help but think using the app would be
much simpler if it were just able to represent multi-parented
tasks in the first place.<br>
<br>
But, like I said, it just suddenly occurred to me that something
like Bugzilla does <i>not</i> have this problem. For example:<br>
<br>
* Bug "Don't have cake" is blocked by bug "Don't have flour";<br>
* Bug "Don't have cake" is blocked by bug "Oven isn't working";<br>
* Bug "Don't have flour" is blocked by bug "Need to go to the
grocery store";<br>
* Bug "Toilet is clogged" is blocked by bug "Don't have Liquid
Plumber";<br>
* Bug "Don't have Liquid Plumber" is blocked by bug "Need to go to
the grocery store".<br>
<br>
Obviously you wouldn't have to describe the tasks in terms of
being "bugs", but (A) I'm putting it in Bugzilla-esque terms just
to show the idea, and (B) I kind of like it, tbh :P<br>
<br>
Crazy or not, that sounds pretty great to me, so now I'm just
generally asking "Are there any other reasons why Bugzilla might
not be great for this?", plus some specific questions based on
that general question:<br>
<br>
(1) Is there a way (preferably an easily usable way) to do things
like "Show me all current blockers", ordering by priority and/or
due date? I'm guessing the answer is "Yes, of course", but more
specifically:<br>
<br>
(2) Can things like "priority" and "due date" in that refer not
simply to the blocker in and of itself, but also to the things
that it blocks? For example, I might decide one day that I should
(for no particular reason) buy some flour, and thus add a "Buy
flour" task with priority "Low". But the next day, I might REALLY
REALLY NEED CAKE, so I'd add a "Bake a cake" task with priority
"Critical". In the report, I would like the "Buy flour" task to
then be considered "Critical", without me needing to go and
manually update that task. And if I then buy enough flour to bake
a cake but for some reason <i>not</i> enough to cover all my
upcoming, low-priority predicted baking needs, I'd like "Buy
flour" to <i>automatically</i> revert to "Low" in the report
after I mark "Bake a cake" as being done.<br>
<br>
(3) This is really a would-be-nice rather than a need, but: How
about ordering by something like... not sure of the actual
terminology to use, but... the <i>combined weight</i> of the
things that the blocker blocks? So something along the lines of a
blocker that blocks a bunch of critical tasks being more important
than a blocker that only blocks a few critical tasks.<br>
<br>
(4) Same not-really-a-need sort of thing: What about repeating
tasks? Is there a reasonably easy way to submit the same sort of
bug every week or whatever? I mean, that cake I bake today isn't
gonna last for the rest of my life.<br>
<br>
Please help. I really need cake.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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