[Sugar-devel] Bug tracking Vs Patch review

[David Farning]

Over the past couple of months there have been a number of thread
regarding patch management.  In reviewing the threads in preparation
for herding a number of patches through the process, I notice that
there seem to be two distinct workflows that are getting interchanged.

Tracking Bugs vs Reviewing Patches

Processing a patch via the bug tracker seems inappropriate.  There are
two distinct differences between bugs and patches.
1.  Purpose.
  A. Bug is a problem waiting for a solution.
  B. Patch implements a change in code.  (It is a solution to a problem)
2. Owner.
  A. Bug is owned by the maintainer -- It is generally accepted to be
the module maintainers responibility to track bugs.
  B. Patch is owned by the submitter -- It is generally accepted to be
the patch submitters Responsibility to herd the patch up the to point
it as been ACKed by the maintainer.

The purpose of a patch review is to ensure that each patch is reviewed
for quality and that each patch implements a change which is desirable
to have in the mainline.  It is not a discussion about the best
possible solution to a problem.  Most of the discussion to date has
been centered around two points (a) syncing the bug tracker to the
patch review process and (b) loosing patches.  If a patch is a
solution to a problem it is not necessary to discuss the problem and
if it is the patch submitters responsibility to track the patch the
need for a maintainer to track the patch goes away.

david