Why is there no public bug tracker?

[Sludge Vohaul 23]

Hi,

 

I guess this has already been discussed, but I didn't find anything about it in the forums.

 

So, just out of curiosity, is there a reason why the Emby project doesn't use a publicly accessible bug tracking system?

 

 

 

[Luke 42077]

Why do you feel that there isn't one?

 

Do you feel as though you dont have a place to report issues?

[Diedrich 377]

I would say it's more of a feeling that raised issues or feature requests can be easily forgotten or purposely ignored when you get a reply like - "That's a good idea, thanks for suggesting" or "Thanks for the report". It's also a question of, hmmm, I wonder what is the status of that bug I filed last week.

[speechles 2055]

For the "open source" things, there is github. You can track issues, feature requests, etc there too.

 

For the "closed source" things there is an opportunity to do better. There is no real place to raise issues, concerns, or feature requests except for this forum, and that is with the "hope" your post doesnt get buried/lost/overlooked.

 

There are too many times, people neglect to +1 the first post and instead +1 in the post thinking that gets them counted. It doesnt really unless somebody is actively chasing posts keeping track, which we all know that somebody is nobody.

 

There is opportunity to do better, I agree.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Sludge Vohaul 23]

Hi,

 

Second question first:

No. You guys are incredible - you reply within minutes to probably most of the topics. When do you actually take the time to write some code...

 

First question:

I feel that there isn't a bug tracking system because I haven't found one yet. Ok, now seriously again.

Don't get me wrong, this is no criticism at all - Emby is a large project which is managed pretty well. I am sure that you've looked at how other projects manage their community feedback, and have obviously come to the conclusion that bug/feature reports via the forum only suit the Emby project the best, and that there is no need for an additional tracking system (otherwise you'd have added one already).

 

For a user having a problem this workflow means:

The user reports an issue in the forum, the issue gets eventually raised to a confirmed bug, and basically that's it. 

In case it is an important issue it might be mentioned in the changelog of the next version, but if it is some minor problem it might simply get fixed without being mentioned in the changelog. Or it might not get fixed, as it might turn out that it is not a bug at all.

 

IMO this workflow has several flaws:

- If a reported issue turns out to be a bug, it's up to you devs to record it somewhere internally (additional work for you guys).

- The user who reported the bug cannot track it - all she can do is to see whether it has been fixed in the next version (minor fixes are not mentioned  in the changelog)

- There are cases when someone else's issue gets confirmed as a bug, oneself is not affected by it, but would still like to see whether/when it gets fixed. Currently this is impossible.

- An issue which gets raised to a bug, might still not be reproducible for you. If it is recorded in a forum only, you're basically lost as no one will provide you with additional information once the thread gets off the first page. In a bug tracking system affected users might search for exactly the same keywords or similar. 

- A detailed changelog is missing. I'd prefer changelog listing new features as well as the bugs fixed in the release

- Automatic status notifications are limited to forum notifications - when there is a confirmed bug (ticket) I might like to be notified when the ticket status changes. In a forum all one can do is tracking new posts (I might not be interested in John Doe's "me too" posts).

- Change history in code. There is no mapping between reported bugs and commit comments.

 

Sorry, the post got long again...