The Problems of Perl: The Future of Bugzilla

[David Miller]

Aaron Trevena wrote on 5/12/07 6:08 AM:

> After so many years I'm pretty surprised that none of the bugzilla
> developers have worked on something to make bundling CPAN modules
> easier, or even used anything like PAR - every wheel seems to be
> reinvented.

This is mostly in response to complaints from people trying to install
Bugzilla.  Our end-users seem to detest external dependencies, so we
always have to evaluate how much bang we're getting out of a perl module
before adding it, and if it's a wheel that's ridiculously easy to
reinvent, we probably will, to avoid the dependency.  If it's a mature
module with lots of bang for the effort (it will actually save us a lot
of time writing code) then we'll probably use it.

> I'm also surprised that there is no pagination for results, and that
> every result for a query - even if there are thousands are always
> fetched and loaded into tons of hashes - no wonder it's memory hungry
> if you write code that eats memory like candy.

Yeah, there's times when you actually want all of them at once, but it
shouldn't be the default.

> I spoke to Max about solving this latter problem, and I'm still
> interested in doing so, but to be honest the combination of the
> Mozilla Foundation/Corporation leaving the project to rot with no
> funding or support,  so much crufty out of date code and a couple of
> vocal people clamouring to stop useful development and instead switch
> to more fashionable languages makes me think "stuff it, it's easier to
> use rt or trac than put up with that".

Given the discussion that's happened here so far I think it's extremely
unlikely that Bugzilla will switch to a new language, at least for the
core code.  I think the discussion is worth having because its a
critical analysis of our code and it helps us understand the code better
and points out some things we need to pay attention to, but I don't see
the project moving to a new language anytime soon.

> If anybody is actually interested in some constructive feedback on
> what needs doing to improve the bugzilla project, that's fine, but I'm
> not going to waste my time, when people who make money from bugzilla
> are wasting there's rewriting it poorly in a language that makes them
> feel warm and fuzzy.

I tend to agree with you here.

-- 
Dave Miller                                   http://www.justdave.net/
System Administrator, Mozilla Corporation      http://www.mozilla.com/
Project Leader, Bugzilla Bug Tracking System  http://www.bugzilla.org/