The Future Of Resolutions

[Jouni Heikniemi]

At 16:14 24.1.2004 +1030, you wrote:
>Without further ado, the following is my current plan:

Without an intention to overly criticize, I'd be interested in hearing some 
thoughts behind these changes. Why are we doing all this? New resolutions 
add complexity, and we've got plenty of that already. The new choices 
should IMO lead to a simpler (but more extendable, through custom 
resolutions) system. Any default selections shouldn't be aimed at a 
particular type of installation, at least not anything of bmo's caliber.

Certainly one can justify something like "MISSING" in an environment where 
that terminal state for bugs is common, but just as an example, I've never 
(and I think I really mean it, never) needed that. The difference between 
WORKSNOW and FIXED is often slim, as neither resolution provides 
information on "What actually fixed this". For certain kind of statistics 
this separation might be useful, but it's hardly ever been that for me.

In another message, Matty says:

 >> Is the semantic difference between this and WORKSFORME great enough to
 >> justify having two resolutions?
 >Anyone qualified to resolve bugs is qualified to make these simple
 >distinctions.

We cannot make statements like that. There's no way to know what abilities 
and knowledge people resolving bugs will have.

Moreso, the claimed benefits of a fine-grained resolution set mostly 
revolve around the expectation of Bugzilla users being able to follow them 
consistently. This is doable, but for most companies, it probably requires 
an internal - possibly product-specific - policy on what is WORKSNOW and 
what is FIXED (just as an example). Many benefits of a well-designed 
resolution system can be lost, if it's too hard to communicate.


I'm not claiming the current resolution set is perfect or anything, but 
this discussion hasn't yet seen a real background discussion. There 
probably exists one in a bug somewhere, and I'll be glad to read it when 
you point me at it.

Still, I feel any changes to a fundamental (and highly visible) part of 
Bugzilla concept should start from a loudly stated and openly discussed 
need: What is wrong with WONTFIX? Why do we need to separate WORKSNOW and 
FIXED? Is changing the resolution set _really_ the best alternative here?


Jouni