[dist-bugs] Use cases, etc

[Lars Wirzenius]

Unlike most people on the list, I haven't really been thinking about
distributed bug tracking very much yet. So I'd like to start at a bit
higher level than implementation details like microformats or database
design. I'd like to discuss use cases, personas, scenarios and so on.

Let me start by giving a couple of examples. First, a couple of
imaginary users.

        * Amanda is a software developer, one of the main authors of a
        wildly successful free software package. She hacks mainly at
        home, with fast network access, multiple fast computers, and
        oodles of time to spend on the project. Being an old-timer in
        the computing industry, she has a tendency to prefer the command
        line. Indeed, she only uses X11 to display xterms (16 per
        screen, with 7 screens total, not counting virtual desktops).

        * Brenda is a college student majoring in theoretical physics.
        As a hobby, she helps maintain Debian, and is one of the team
        that maintains the Debian package of Amanda's software. Brenda
        has a very busy life, but often has fifteen or thirty minute
        time slots to do stuff on her laptop, e.g., between lectures,
        labs, on the train, and so on. Often she does not have network
        access during these time slots, or indeed all day.

        * Cecil is a user of Amanda's software. He has no computer
        expertese at all: he's a Mac user and the one time he saw a
        command line, he paniced and ran out of the room. He's smart,
        though, and is perfectly able to follow instructions and
        generally his bug reports are of high quality, after the
        developer's ask him to provide the exact data they require, and
        explain how to get it.


Then, a couple of use cases or scenarios (not sure about the
conventional terminology).

        * Report a new bug, either against the Debian package, or the
        upstream package, and have the information be shared to the
        other.
        
        * Ask for additional information related to a bug.
        
        * Add a comment to a bug, with more information to help the
        developer find and fix the cause.
        
        * Mark a bug as fixed, and include the fix or reference to it.
        
So, the question is, how would Amanda, Brenda, and Cecil act in these
cases? What would they do, how would the distributed system act, what
data needs to go where, and how is stuff communicated between instances
of the distributed tracker ("branches" in dvcs)?