Subject: Do people use TRAC much?

From: Stefan Winter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 11:16:13 +0200

Hi,

being a new chair, I was trying to eat chair dogfood i.e. use the TRAC
system to keep track of things during the PROTO writeup phase.

The first time I used it, my tickets were permanently lost after being
online at first (some cluster/load-balance misconfiguration where "my"
instance of the database with tickets got overwritten some time after my
submission).

This second time, sending email seems to be broken on a somewhat
permanent basis (tried Friday and today) with a rather obvious brokenness:
"Warning: The ticket has been created, but an error occurred while
sending notifications: [email-masked]': (451, 'Temporary
local problem - please try later'),
[email-masked]': (451,
'Temporary local problem - please try later'), [email-masked]': (451,
'Temporary local problem - please try later')} "
That extraneous "u" before the addresses catches the eye quite easily.
If someone reads the server logs, I would think these kind of things get
caught.

So, just wondering - do I just have extraordinarily bad karma and hit
the only two bugs in the system in a row, while everybody else is
merrily and heavily using TRAC - or am I walking alone in a dark
dead-end street without realising?

Greetings,

Stefan Winter

-- 
Stefan WINTER
Ingenieur de Recherche
Fondation RESTENA - Réseau Téléinformatique de l'Education Nationale et
de la Recherche
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L-1359 Luxembourg

Tel: +352 424409 1
Fax: +352 422473

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---

From: Tim Wicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 06:09:07 -0400

> dead-end street without realising?

Stefan,

I attempted such a step, and I gave up silently after not making much 
headway.

After watching how Mark and Martin are using github for the httpbis 
documents, and issue tracking, I started doing it in small doses for 
some wrangling of authors on some drafts, and I've been happy enough to 
keep poking at it.

I think many groups track in a simpler manner as they don't have many 
issues, but others need a more formalized approach.

I also think using github helps bridge into other communities. My 
evidence is all anecdotal.

---

From: Jouni <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:05:30 +0300

I actually use both.. I like trac because it gives me a ticket number etc and github for tracking actual intermediate changes. To use trac one usually has to lay out ground rules how the wg is supposed to use it, otherwise it will end to a chaos when there are tens and tens of tickets. (personal opinion.. We just love to babble and write too much emails instead of contributing exact text that could be updated e.g. into trac before commiting that to the draft ;)

Jouni

-- 
Jouni Korhonen
Broadcom

(Sent from my mobile..)

> Tim Wicinski <[email-masked]> kirjoitti 2.6.2014 kello 13.09:
> 
> 
> 
> I attempted such a step, and I gave up silently after not making much headway.
> 
> After watching how Mark and Martin are using github for the httpbis documents, and issue tracking, I started doing it in small doses for some wrangling of authors on some drafts, and I've been happy enough to keep poking at it.
> 
> I think many groups track in a simpler manner as they don't have many issues, but others need a more formalized approach.
> 
> I also think using github helps bridge into other communities. My evidence is all anecdotal.
>

---

From: Tomek Mrugalski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 13:22:52 +0200

On 02.06.2014 11:16, Stefan Winter wrote:
> being a new chair, I was trying to eat chair dogfood i.e. use the
> TRAC system to keep track of things during the PROTO writeup
> phase.
> 
> The first time I used it, my tickets were permanently lost after
> being online at first (some cluster/load-balance misconfiguration
> where "my" instance of the database with tickets got overwritten
> some time after my submission).
DHC uses the trac quite successfully, but it's a sort of uncommon
case. We're currently working on RFC3315bis (DHCPv6). The base RFC is
over 10 years old and we're working on updated version. We have lots
of small corrections, erratas and small improvements to make. Trac is
ideal tool for tracking such a thing. We have dedicated mailing list
and trac for this (http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/dhcpv6bis/). It
works fine for us so far. Keep in mind that "us" means a small design
team, around 7 people with only occasional contributions from others.

As for the base WG trac, we don't use it. When Bernie and I became
chairs, we cleaned up several tickets (3 years or older) and never
submitted anything new. We currently don't have any tickets open.

One problem with trac was that each change used to generate a
notification to the list. That generated a lot of noise. Some people
may find it useful to get notifications, but others find it annoying.

> permanent basis (tried Friday and today) with a rather obvious
> brokenness: "Warning: The ticket has been created, but an error
> occurred while sending notifications: [email-masked]':
> (451, 'Temporary local problem - please try later'), 
> 'Temporary local problem - please try later'), [email-masked]':
> (451, 'Temporary local problem - please try later')} " That
> extraneous "u" before the addresses catches the eye quite easily. 
> If someone reads the server logs, I would think these kind of
> things get caught.
That's a Python notation and it means that the string is unicode. That
is unlikely to be the source of the problem here.

> So, just wondering - do I just have extraordinarily bad karma and
> hit the only two bugs in the system in a row, while everybody else
> is merrily and heavily using TRAC - or am I walking alone in a
> dark dead-end street without realising?
I have encountered the email sending problem. I think it was last
week. We have been using trac for at least half a year and it was
working fine.

Hope that helps,
Tomek

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:25:13 -0400

> brokenness:

...

    > dead-end street without realising?

bad karma.  Roll opens 10 tickets/month or so, and we try to close 11...
It is unclear to me how the WG mailing list should interact with TRAC.
Not everyone understands the web interface, or wants to use it.

My take is that an issue is posted, the mailing list discusses possible
solutions, and once someone thinks we have reached consensus, posts that
to the ticket, and then, on the mailing list, asserts that this was the
result, and if not challenged, then waits for document author to close
the ticket with the result.

Does this work in practice?  I'm still hoping.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:26:45 -0800

> dead-end street without realising?

I've used it fairly heavily with two working groups, and yes, I've
run into serious administration problems (not software bugs as
nearly as I can tell) that either caused data loss or slowed progress.
I'm generally in favor of hanging tough on these problems and
insisting on getting them fixed.  I know there's been some offloading
of tools onto sites run by other organizations but I really feel pretty
strongly that IETF process tools belong on IETF assets.  Trac is used
quite widely without serious problems, and it can be the case with
the IETF trac installation, too.

Melinda