os metadata / getting rid of enums

[Gervase Markham]

Jonathan Schatz wrote:
> 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. 

The obvious thing to do here, it seems to me, is to have two fields. One 
has the values Linux, Windows (NT), Windows (consumer), BSD and the 
other has the detailed breakdown. You use JS to keep the two fields 
consistent in the interface.

The second possible thing to do is make sure all the Linux ones contain 
the string "Linux", and the Windows ones contain the string "Win", and 
do regexp searching on the field instead of "exact match". You could 
customise the query page to make this possible.

> 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?

I believe that this is on the cards, because enums aren't cross-database.

Gerv