Simpler Bugzilla

[Jochen Wiedmann]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 12:51 AM, Gervase Markham <gerv at mozilla.org> wrote:

> Is it worth us considering whether we want to make default Bugzilla use
> fewer fields? Are there some switchable ones turned on by default that
> we could turn off? Or can we put a few more hard-coded ones inside [% IF
> %] blocks to make them switchable?

I know that in particular the search UI is/was deterrent for a lot of
users. The "simple search" was a great help, but the "advanced search"
could do with renaming to "expert search" and the addition of someting
in between. Apart from the search, I only heard complaints about the
bug editing UI, but the primary candidates for removal there are
already configurable via parameters.


> - We could support and ship with SQLite. I suspect it would be all that
> 90% of installations needed, and removes the need to set up and
> configure MySQL or PgSQL.

That would sure be nice. OTOH, it might make upgrades more difficult.
And, apart from that, I do personally believe that the most important
problem is not the setup but the myriad of Perl modules. The changes
in the email system for 3.0 haven't been exactly helpful there. I do
not know so much about Perl than I used to do, in particular, I do not
know whether there is an equivalent to the Java jar files today, but
an included delivery of the required/optional modules would help.
Perhaps in a separate directory, where you can very easily switch them
off, and perhaps including the Pure-Perl modules only.


> - We could ship with a simple Perl webserver or lighttpd, which removes
> the need to set up and configure Apache. We don't use many advanced
> webserver features; as long as it obeys .htaccess files, we should be fine.

I do not know how the reality on the user lists look alike, but
personally I never considered that as painful.


> With these two features, installing Bugzilla would be a case of:
>
> - Download and unpack
> - Run the module install script
> - Do first-run config in the GUI like your SMTP server name
> - Done.
>
> Not even any localconfig, as far as I can see.
>
> What do people think?

About the localconfig: I am always impressed by the setup of systems
like typo3, drupal, egroupware, mediawiki: The system detects whether
it is a first time installation (usually because some config file is
missing) and provides a UI for the first time installation. I would
recommend to think in that direction instead.

Of course, a complete distribution would be nice, but I think it is
realistic for Windows only. Apart from that, that's something you can
leave to interesting individuals and not necessarily a task for the
whole community.


Jochen


-- 
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before
you break 'em.

 -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time)