129765 - Bonsai reporting should add checkin comments to the relevant bugs.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 199116

(Webtools Graveyard :: Bonsai, defect)

Description

[selmer (gone)]

There is an obvious gap in our automated systems.  Bugzilla knows all the work
we think is worth doing.  Bonsai knows all the work we have done.  The two
systems don't talk to each other directly. 

The bonsai reporting mechanism should be enhanced to add a comment to the bug(s)
listed in the cvs checkin comments.  Ideally, it would include a link to the
diffs represented by the checkin.  If more than one bug applies for a given
checkin it might help to designate the first bug in the list as the primary
(although I can see reasons to treat them all the same as well.)

Why do this?  All the information we need is already in the reports bonsai
generates.  The information is useful in its own right to see what the progress
of the bug is and to easily find the changes that were checked in for the bug. 
In addition, it would help us in managing our projects to see which branches the
patches have landed on and exactly what time that happened.  (Today, if the bug
gets updated at all you usually only have the time the comment was added in the
bug to indicate about when the checkin happened.)

(Sorry if I got the wrong version setting, I don't know what the right one would
be.)

Comment 1

[mental]

Hmmm...  this seems quite similar to bug 6422.  Was this the one you were
looking for, Dave?

Comment 2

[selmer (gone)]

bug 6422 is much more comprehensive than what I'm asking for and may create
unwanted interdependencies between the systems.  I'm looking for a simple post
of a comment to the affected bug(s) from bonsai/cvs to bugzilla.  Just adding a
comment should not create undue interdependencies and should itself be harmless.
 It's also OK if it fails some of the time or posts to the "wrong" bug some of
the time, as long as it's a very small percentage.  We can work out the glitches
over time.

I believe the semantics of closing the bug at checkin are wrong because it
doesn't have any way to account for branches separately from the trunk.  (We use
keywords to denote checkin status for branches instead of changing the
resolution of the bug.)  It's probably possible to get all that figured out, but
it's not a prerequisite of what I'm requesting here.  (If you were closing the
bug, you'd want these comments anyway, so what I'm asking for is a subset of
what bug 6422 is asking for.)

Comment 3

[Christian Reis]

I will try and code this today.

Comment 4

[Christian Reis]

Hey, folks. I need a spec on what the comment should look like, I'm not feeling
very creative today. Anybody care to chip in?

BTW, my implementation is independent of Bonsai.

Comment 5

[selmer (gone)]

Would the information and format from Bonsai be sufficient?  It shows columns
for When, Who, File, Rev, +/-, and Description.  File and Rev are links to the
diffs and Description is the checkin comment.  The Rev number on Bonsai is
context sensitive to the branch for the checkin, so for this purpose the Branch
tag should be included in the comment.  The Who field may be redundant if the
comment is posted as the person doing the checkin, but it's critical if the
comment is not posted from that person.  If all that information is there and
readable, then it doesn't need a whole lot of work on making it pretty. 
Something like putting each item on its own line with a label would be
sufficient for a first cut patch.

Thanks a lot for taking this on!

Comment 6

[Christian Reis]

Unfortunately I don't think I can add a comment as the user without having a
"master password" facility in Bugzilla, which I don't think we really want.

Revision, who, branch, file, comment seem great. The shame is that we can't link
to bonsai easily from bugzilla, but if somebody comes up with a nice proposal to
linkify file name links, I'll cook it up after this is done.

Comment 7

[selmer (gone)]

Although you can't have bugzilla just do the right thing, can't you just put the
URL into the comment body as "http://..."?

Comment 8

[selmer (gone)]

Even without the linking stuff, it would be great to get the basic version of
this going.  Any chance of getting the basic mechanism in place and worrying
about the rest of the details later?  Just having the checkin comment and the
revision info be a huge improvement.

Comment 9

[timeless]

you can certainly use this format:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi&rev=1.18

alternatively you could reference to a bonsai query for the date range by the
person.
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=all&branch=HEAD&branchtype=match&who=gerv&whotype=regexp&date=explicit&mindate=3%2F23%2F2002+09%3A58%3A00&maxdate=3%2F23%2F2002+09%3A58%3A00&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot

i'm not quite sure i understand selmer's branch comment. anyone can later map a
version back to a branch.

given the original request, i'd suggest a cvsquery url. it only requires one.

The only problem i see is when a username changes. We could probably modify
bonsai so that it supported queries by user number and the urls it generated for
bugzilla used them.

from my perspective, the bonsai side isn't particularly tough. the big issue is
the fact that you're creating a bugzilla key and giving it to bonsai. i'd
suggest creating a bonsai account (perhaps [e-mail]) in
bugzilla, setting a param for it in bonsai and bugzilla, and configuring
bugzilla so that the account can comment on any bug and would never receive
output from cgis (including but not limited to process mail, process bug, and
show bug). That should minimize most risks.

As for a bugzilla comment spec: a single url. nothing more :).

Comment 10

[selmer (gone)]

> i'm not quite sure i understand selmer's branch comment. anyone can later map a
> version back to a branch.

Many bugs have multiple checkins associated with them.  A typical pattern is for
a fix to be checked in on the trunk and then also on a release branch.  The
automatic annotation of those checkins *in the bug* has high value IMO, but the
bug comment needs to state *where* the checkin occured in order to maximize that
value.

Comment 11

[Christian Reis]

I have a proof of concept working, just needs some polishing up; I got
sidetracked by Real Life<tm> but I'm on it

Comment 12

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

I like the second URL suggested by timeless in comment 9.
But instead of a raw URL, I would prefer a shorter link text, for example:
2002-03-23 09:58 HEAD gerv

On longer bugs it could be hard to find the checkin comments if there is more
than one. Maybe the checkin comments should be a summary of all the checkins
so far, for example:
2002-03-23 09:58 HEAD       gerv
2002-03-27 23:00 BRANCH_1_0 selmer

It also would be nice to have a tool to generate checkin comments
for an existing Bonsai/Bugzilla database.

Comment 13

[Hunter Peress]

This is such an essential bug that should be fixed. It would increase the
ability for anyone to quickly see which files go with which bug.

Comment 14

[Hunter Peress]

This is such an essential bug that should be fixed. It would increase the
ability for anyone to quickly see which files go with which bug.

This is a small change, and many people (as you can see from the above comments)
have already made patches. I hope its implemented.

Comment 15

[Christian Reis]

Dave Swegan and I are working on an implementation that is based on a
Bonsai-free loginfo script. It's a better approach than having Bonsai do the job
for many reasons (simplicity, less changes to both tools, speed, lack of Bonsai
requirement, etc). 

This is not strictly a dupe, since the original request was for Bonsai
reporting, but the essential functionality is identical, and Dave's bug has a
patch (that I failed to produce here), so done.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 199116 ***