os metadata / getting rid of enums

[Jonathan Schatz]

At my workplace, we use the OS field in a very detailed way. Currently,
our list of OS's is around 100 entries (every version + variant of major
linux distributions, every windows version + patchlevel since windows
for workgroups, etc). One of the most requested features we have is the
ability to search for generic OS's, ie searching for new bugs on "linux"
would return all bugs filed against redhat 7.2, suse 8.0, etc. I've
started to implement this in our private bugzilla branch, and I've
realized that this would be easier for me if the OS field was broken out
of its' current enum container and into its' own table. In that table
i'd have boolean columns (ie, is_linux, is_windows, etc). this brings up
2 questions:

1) Is there a reason why all of the enum columns in bugs.bugs haven't
been broken out into their own tables? Isn't this a key in making
bugzilla database independent?
2) Would others have use for generic OS searching as described above?
We've currently got a rather unusual setup in that we use 2 OS fields
for bugs. If others would find this useful, I'd write the code against
HEAD and patch it to work with our setup; if not, I'd go ahead and write
it for our own use.

feedback / flames are welcome.

-jon
-- 
Jonathan Schatz
Engineering System Administrator
VMware, Inc
"Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est."