Re: bug tracking

[Denis DeLaRoca <delaroca@ucla.edu>]

On Sat, 9 Dec 2000, Lloyd Lim wrote:

> To speed things along, I've made an "executive decision" and chosen
> 'FIXME' as our standard code marker for problem areas.  I've changed
> all occurrences of 'XXX' to 'FIXME'.
> 
> I know you're dying to know...
> 
> The mash-1 directory contains 1,648 occurrences of FIXME.
> 
> I am not joking.

If I recall, some of the code used 'XXX' as a convention to signal "to be
further developed", "need more functionality" or "this code needs
rewriting"... and that is quite different from "THERE'S A BUG HERE THAT
NEEDS FIXING."

So, rather than contemplating the prospect of fixing 1,648 BUGS in MASH,
why not generalize this 'inline comment' convention slightly to try to
categorize the possible reasons that a particular code segment needs
attention -- though, I realize doing that proactively is nearly
impossible?

What conventions do the other Open Source projects use?

Best,

-- Denis