UI module owner

[Gervase Markham]

Joost de Valk wrote:
> I must agree with Daniel here, my experience is that some stuff simply
> isn't there to play with. One of the simple customizations i'm thinking
> of here is the fact that you have to expose the bug variable to the
> template in attachment.cgi, to do ANYTHING based on which product you're
> adding an attachment for.
> 
> Simple stuff like that requires you to fiddle with the code, so i think
> a lot of useful and quite simple customizations would require you to
> change code.

OK... you say that is "simple stuff", but in fact, it's incredibly
niche. Let's break the sentence down:

You have to expose the FOO variable to the template in BAR.cgi, to do
ANYTHING based on which WIDGET you're VERBing a FRED for.

That sentence could just have easily have been:

"You have to expose the user variable to the template in
showdependencygraph.cgi to do ANYTHING based on which user you're
showing the dependencies to. Simple stuff like that requires you to
fiddle with the code..."

My point is that there could be thousands and thousands of these
"simple" requirements, each entirely dependent on the particular
situation and need of the company in question. Is it really feasible to
meet any significant proportion of requests like this?

I'm not sure that we're capable of reaching a place where the majority
of requests like your "Simple stuff" above will be doable without having
to change the code. Perhaps I'm being pessimistic. But if there are 1000
companies, there seem to be 1001 ways of bug tracking.

Take CheckCanChangeField() for an example. We didn't try and produce a
web-based interface to determining who can change what field when, we
just documented the function. And the number of different things people
have wanted to do in there over the years is incredible - read the
newsgroup back for a bit.

Gerv