The Road to 2.18

[Stuart Donaldson]

Gervase Markham wrote:

> Stuart Donaldson wrote:
>
>> It would be a big win from the users perspective to get even a 
>> partial solution towards custom fields get into the system for the 
>> next release. This would lock-down a supported schema with a 
>> migration path in case the approach were to change. All these caveats 
>> about applying the custom fields patches because there is "no 
>> guarantee that this will be the way we do it" are holding some people 
>> back from trying it out.
>
>
> Indeed. And that's something we want to maintain. Locking down the 
> schema is to be avoided - because we want to be able to say "actually, 
> this is all wrong, we want to do it differently."
>

I must respectfully disagree. 

The custom fields issue has been around for several years with only a 
handful of people able to put any time into working it because of the 
maintenance risks, and the chance of it going in a conflicting 
direction.  Continuing to wait for the perfect solution will result in 
the same issues and frustrations several years from now.

What is needed, is a path to be chosen, and for Bugzilla to take at 
least a couple of steps down that path. 

It should be possible to choose a minimal feature set that will take 
will address 75% of the requirements for custom fields.  Then make the 
committment to maintain an upward migration path for that approach.

The schema is never "locked down" only the requirement that a migration 
from an old schema be provided. 

I believe many bugzilla users would really like to see some progress 
here.  I also believe that if some support for custom fields can make it 
into the main release, that contributions and participation on filling 
out the functionality will accelerate as the barrier for participation 
becomes lower.

-Stuart-