How are we doing?

[Tony Lambregts]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> As the Summer Of Code begins and new blood joins us all at once,
> I thought it'd be a good time to open a discussion on how we are doing as
> a project. 
> 
> Questions to consider:
> 
>  * Is Wine improving or is the regression rate matching the improvement
>    rate?

Since I have Administrated both the AppDB and Bugzilla for quite a while 
I would say that this is about even with regressions keeping pace with 
improvements. What seems to be improving is the rate at which the 
regressions are caught and fixed.

Catching regressions early is critical to fixing them and the faster 
release cycle helps but only if the user upgrades in a timely fashion.

Some programs have been Rock Solid for years (eg: SimCity 3000) while 
others are are not. Myst worked for years and then fell victim the 
Windows Management rewrite and I have just recently been able to run it 
again but it is still very unstable.

Over All I am seeing a lot more activity in bugzilla [1] since we went 
to 0.9.0 as I am sure most of you are aware. Some may call it a flood 
but over all I think this has been a good thing. The real downside to 
this is that it takes a lot more of my time to go through each email and 
see if I can assist and that the proper bug links are in place.

[1]
501  in Apr 2005
1492 in Apr 2006

610  in May 2005
1174 in May 2006

> 
>  * Are we producing a quality product, from the perspective of
>    non-technical end users?   (I appreciate this isn't a goal for everyone)
> 
Going to winecfg has made the product more user friendly but we are 
still seem to be a long way away from "It Just Works" in a lot of cases.

In the interm I believe the AppDB has helped a lot. I think that the 
work that we have put into it has paid off fairly well to a point. So 
far we have added:

- Applications Maintantainers that can modify application entries on an 
App by App basis.

- Notification emails so that people (Administrators, Maintainers and 
Monitors) kept up to date on changes to applications.

- Bug links to track bugs affecting an application.

- Test results to track how well an application runs on a Wine version. 
and help spot regressions

- Lots of small improvements.

Lots of thanks to Chris Morgan and Johnathan Ernst and everyone else 
that submited patches to get it to its current state.

However there are a number of things that are needed still.

- We need a general search page.

- It would be nice to have the ability for people to have classes of 
rights so that they can add/change/delete certain fields IE: 
"Application Description" without having to become a maintainer or 
administrator.

There is a todo list here as well. http://wiki.winehq.org/AppdbInfo

If anyone has experience with PHP or wants to gain some, there is a real 
need for your help.


- A newsgroup set up that works the same as bugs so that anyone can see 
the notifications generated by the AppDB.

I asked Jeremy Newman for this before but I don't think that I explained 
the need for it very well. (trying again)


- More Maintainers

If you have an app that you run on a regular basis please consider 
becomeing a maintainer for that app.

- More Administrators

The Application Queue is not being processed in a timely fashion.

For myself I am busy with my day job, working on upgrading bugzilla, and 
burnt out/frustrated trying to keep up with Application submitions (I am 
too soft hearted to reject some submittions that probably should be 
rejected). Keeping up with the Application Queue is a tough job (for me 
at least, at this time) and at this point just reviewing some of the 
submittions makes my head hurt.

Alexander Nicolaysen Sørnes and KillerTux have picked up some of the 
slack but I think we could use some more help.

This job is time consuming, tedious, thankless and does not come with a 
paycheck. It requires attention to detail and is a position of trust and 
responsability. On the plus side it does NOT require any programming 
skills. So... if this sounds like something you would like to do please 
send an email to appdb at winehq.org explaining why you you think you would 
be a good AppDB Administrator. (The guys in the white coats will be 
around ASAP)


Thanks

--

Tony Lambregts.