1354729 - Would be good to have a "timed needinfo" mechanism

Status: NEW

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Extensions, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It's pretty common to have things like "fix this bug once 57 ships".  It would be awesome if it were possible to set up a needinfo to appear on a particular date, so things can be easily ignored until then and pop up on worklists once the date is hit.

Comment 1

[Andre Klapper]

Isn't that exactly what the tracking flags are for, or setting an assignee in combination with a priority?

Comment 2

[Bobby Holley (:bholley)]

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #1)
> Isn't that exactly what the tracking flags are for

There is no tracking flag for "Boris should remember to clean up these special cases when we successfully ship a Firefox 57 release without XPCOM addons." There aren't even tracking flags at all for 57 yet, because it's several releases out.

> or setting an assignee
> in combination with a priority?

That doesn't get the issue off the radar, meaning that the person has to keep looking at the non-actionable thing. Delaying action items to a later data is a classic thing that productivity tools should do.

(Also, FWIW, "assignee" is pretty workflow-dependent. Plenty of people never look at their assigned bugs).

Comment 3

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

Purely time-based or would there be more value in this being based on some sort of bug status change?

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

What bug status change corresponds to "nightly is now 57"?

Comment 5

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

"needinfo if [tracking flag] changes to [value]" possibly, but I'll ignore that and just consider what was requested.

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> "needinfo if [tracking flag] changes to [value]"

Right; the problem is that for the use cases we care about it doesn't.  :(

Comment 7

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

I'm seeing these use cases come up:

* In $n days, needinfo? user
* On $date, needinfo? user
* If [tracking flag] changes to [value], needinfo? user

Are there other cases to consider, such as:

* If bug $x enters [state], needinfo? user about current bug

If we were only able to do one of these, which would be the most useful?

Questions:

* What happens if the account of the user requesting one of these 'conditional' flags is deactivated/suspended
* What happens if the bug is restricted to a group, and the user requesting the conditional flag is removed from the group
* What happens if the bug is resolved before the the condition triggering the flag occurs

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> * If bug $x enters [state], needinfo? user about current bug

That would be somewhat useful too, yes.  I can try to track it via bugmail now, but something more explicit might be nice.

> If we were only able to do one of these, which would be the most useful?

I think "On $date, needinfo? user" would be most useful for me at the moment.

> Questions:

I think the answers, in order are as follows:

1) Not sure there's much we can do here; just skip setting the flag.
2) Mail the flag requester, tell them we couldn't set the flag and why.
3) Set the flag anyway; they can clear it if needed.

Comment 9

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

This is related to JP's requests for PI.