[dmd-internals] Oldest five bugs

[Jason House]

On Jan 18, 2012, at 4:48 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu <andrei at erdani.com> wrote:

> On 1/18/12 3:41 PM, Don Clugston wrote:
>> From 5 years 8 months to 5 years 6 months. I don't think we get much
>> leverage from that.
> 
> We must start somewhere, and with time the "de-aging" process will accelerate. Without giving old bugs due process, we undermine people's confidence that we're thorough and that every bug will be ultimately looked at.
> 
>> We don't have the resources to improve either the number of open bugs,
>> or the age of the oldest bug, by enough that anybody would care.
>> By contrast...
>> 
>> REGRESSIONS.
> 
> I agree regressions are important. But we shouldn't frame things as "either we look at older bugs or fix regressions". I think each release should pay attention to both.

I agree with Andrei. As D fights to gain popularity, it will be evaluated by a variety of somewhat arbitrary metrics by people deciding if they should take the D plunge.

People will definitely look at how quickly bugs get closed. For a new language with a recent uptick in community involvement, 6 year old bugs are definitely embarrassing.

Just like the "no new regressions" policy, a "no bugs more than 5 years old" policy might be good too. Having recent updates to old bugs by core people would definitely blunt some of it.

Things can also be made to look better with a liberal policy of marking old bugs as wontfix as well as consolidating older bugs into newer, more general, bugs.