381665 - Rename "PC" and "Mac" in hardware field to reflect use as a CPU architecture

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Administration, task)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

Most bugs filed recently have one of the following Hardware/OS combinations:

PC  / Windows XP
PC  / Windows 2000
PC  / Mac OS X      (Intel-chip-based Mac)
Mac / Mac OS X      (PPC-based Mac)
PC  / Linux

This means bugzilla.mozilla.org has really using the "Hardware" field to indicate CPU architecture.  We should rename "PC" to "x86" and "Mac" to "PPC" or "PowerPC" to reflect this use.

This change would greatly reduce confusion related to whether a MacBook Pro should be called a "Mac" or a "PC".  (See bug 379672 comment 3 and the "Touché" ad for examples of that kind of confusion.)  I think it would improve the accuracy of the field as a result.

As software developers, we really are more interested in CPU architecture than who assembled your computer or whether you think an ICBM is a "PC" or a "Mac" or both :)

Related: bug 28585, bug 275573.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

It might be useful to include 64-bit extensions, but we should probably leave that out, because:

* We don't compile 64-bit versions of Firefox.

* Most desktop systems have no need for 64-bit.

* Only a few bugs involve 64-bit-ness, and even fewer involve other changes related to AMD64 (e.g. bug 233765).

* It's confusing that there are two competing 64-bit extensions to x86: x86-64 (AMD64, Intel 64) and IA64 (Intel Itanium).

* We already have a "64bit" keyword for 64-bit-specific issues.

* We already have a tracking bug for one of the 64-bit architectures (bug 237202).

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

More evidence: bug 30426, "Patch to Implement Stack Walking for LinuxPPC", is marked as Hardware: Mac, OS: Linux.

Comment 3

[:glob ✱]

looks like this bug was fixed a while ago.