98496 - Attachment numbers should be per bug for better usability

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: Attachments & Requests, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Thanks to the new attachment/patch tracking facilities, attachment ids are
occuring in comments more frequently, see e.g. bug 93977:

> (From update of attachment 48398 [details] [diff] [review])

This is unfortunate because 5-digit numbers are hard to remember. Their use for
bug ids is ok because bugs are often long-lived, and there is no better way to
reference them reliably. Attachments however usually belong to a bug, they are
created in a bug's context, and most of the time they are also referred to from
comments in that bug. Also, often attachments are replaced by newer versions,
and the old ones become obsolete.
When you are talking about attachments ("Are you referring to this attachment or
to that one?"), you currently identify them by their id (5-digit number), their
creation timestamp, or maybe their text. It would be good if attachments could
be referred to by their position in the attachment list in a bug: You would then
talk about attachment #3 [details] [diff] [review] in bug xyz. The old attachment ids could still be used
internally, but the user should probably never see them. Internally, there
should be a mapping from pairs (bug_id,attach_no) to the old-style attachment
id.
If this is implemented, then the above question reduces to "Are you referring to
attachment 3 [details] [diff] [review] or attachment 4 [details] [diff] [review]?" which is a lot more user friendly than "Are you
referring to attachment 43512 [details] [diff] [review]3512 or attachment 44643 [details]?".

Comment 1

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

This would be a hard change to make for existing installations, since if I can
make a comment that refers to, for example, attachment 10000 [details].

Comment 2

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

This can easily be solved with the following heuristic: If a comment refers to
attachment n and the current bug has less than n attachments, then make the
comment link to the attachment with the "global" id n. Otherwise, point to the
attachment in the current bug.

This would work for 99.9% of the cases. I think the remaining 0.1% of error can
be tolerated.

Comment 3

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

See also bug 148562. This bug would cause a problem in that it would have to be
executed alongside the current numbering scheme (as not to invalidate web
links). Because of that, there might be confusion at two competing schemes. Even
still, you would have to edit the URL to replace parts of it with
"show_bug.cgi?id=" and remove the extraneous information from the URL in order
to go to the bug.

Comment 4

[Csaba Gabor]

A simple way to achieve incremental attachment numbers per bug is to have a format like:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=98496.1&action=view

where the part before the decimal point (.) is the bug number, and the integer n after the decimal point indicates the nth attachment for that bug.  This way you have backwards compatibility, but better utility going forward.  [Side note: if n is greater than the number of attachments, then n could represents the old/internal attachment number as long as it is associated with the given bug number.  I have checked attachment numbers 1-30 under bugzilla.mozilla.org and there is not conflict with this scheme].

Csaba Gabor from Vienna

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

Maybe a better alternative is to display the attachment description rather than the attachment ID in (From update of attachment ....).

Comment 6

[Frédéric Buclin]

People more likely refer to attachments using their description rather than their ID. I don't want to change the way attachment numbering work. I never saw someone having real trouble with the current numbering, and nobody being CC'ed to this bug in 10 years is a good indication that this has never been a real problem for anyone.