bug tracking, or task management?

[Joel Peshkin]

Shane H. W. Travis wrote:

>I've just made some localized mods that fall smack on the side of Task
>Management, and I'm wondering if something like this would be at all
>interesting to Bugzilla.
>
>
>BACKGROUND: Many of the contracts signed by SED Systems are for individually
>tailored software packages that will be used by one specific customer. Since
>a lot of the underlying functionality (reduncancy switching between servers,
>message communication, alarms, operator interface) is the same from project
>to project, we have a large reusable code base called The Framework.
>
>PROBLEM: When a new project finds a bug in the Framework, they have to hand
>it off to Framework coders to fix it. It is something that is blocking their
>progress, however, so they also want it tracked locally.
>
>ISSUE #1: The needs of the Framework group (discussing how to best fix the
>bug, and its ramifications on other parts of the framweork) are irrelevant
>to the end project, and the comments of the end project (e.g. knowing that
>the fix has been installed on the local testbed, but not yet at site) are
>irrelevant to the core framework coders.
>
>ISSUE #2: Since both sides of the issue want to track progress of the log
>item, re-assigning a single log item to different projects at various stages
>is not acceptable, as the scope is then lost to whoever doesn't 'own' it
>right now.
>
>SOLUTION: Creation of a simple way to duplicate an existing log item. Added
>the ability to say, "Make this bug look like ____" to on enter_bug.cgi (and
>its templates), which pulls all relevant information and the first comment
>out of the database, then inserts them into the local fields. On commit, the
>copy and original are automatically given a dependson/blocks relationship.
>
>
>I can think of a number of situations where something like this would come
>in really handy... but they seem to me to fall under 'task management' and
>not 'bug tracking'. Silly example: you own five rental properties, and want
>to get new locks on each one. The meta-task is "Install new locks in each of
>my properties"; each of your properties (products) has its own copy of this
>item, blocked by the original. As the hardware arrives, you install it in
>each house as you make visits there, and close the appropriate bug. (This
>contrived situation is actually analogous to some hardware projects we have
>in the building.)
>
>
>Unlike some of my local modifications -- which I confess are 'do whatever
>works' -- I was inspired by recent participation in this list to try and do
>this *right*. As such, I think I could make a decent patch for this. It
>would still be some work, though, especially since I'd have to test it
>against a 2.19 installation (right?) and we're only running 2.16.6 locally.
>I don't see any open (or closed) bugs or enhancement requests asking for a
>feature like this, though, and it may well be that nobody out there but us
>NEEDS to be able to duplicate a bug (or in our case, a Log Item).
>
>So, I'm looking for some feedback, I guess. Does this fall into Bugzilla's
>'scope' as a bug-tracking tool, or is it too task-managementish? Or does it
>matter, because nobody but us would ever need such an enhancement anyway so
>there's no use submitting it?
>
>
>  
>
Heck yes.   In fact, I use a bookmarklet to do just that.  See bug 
241443 for that.  If you have a cleaner way to handle it, I'd sure use it.