[Fwd: NetBSD Bugathon: Not quite dead]]

[Mark Linimon]

Here's what NetBSD has been up to in tackling their own PR backlog.

I will note that several of our own folks (including remko, bms, and others)
have been tackling our own backlog recently, and we've seen the total # fall
quite a bit.

In looking at the PRs, it helps to keep in mind that we can never fix them
all; we aren't a full-time professional staff.  Even trying to fix a whole
block of them at once can burn you out.  However, taking them one at a time
and working on them is IMHO very helpful to FreeBSD -- if nothing else, it
helps our users feel that they are involved in helping out, and this is
almost always a good thing.  (Sometimesn we see people who get very
insistent about The Right Way To Do Things -- this is an occupational
hazard of volunteer work and you need to place in a proper perspective).

Of course, I obviously think this work is worth doing, or I wouldn't be
trying to work on the incoming PRs as they arrive :-)

mcl

----- Forwarded message from Remko Lodder <remko at elvandar.org> -----

From: Remko Lodder <remko at elvandar.org>
To: Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com>, Ceri Davies <ceri at submonkey.net>
Subject: [Fwd: NetBSD Bugathon: Not quite dead]
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Hey Bug-people, this could really be something for our efforts as well
(what we are doing recently) ;-)

Just have a look and tell me how you look against this :)

Cheers,
remko

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NetBSD Bugathon: Not quite dead
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:45:51 +0200
From: Elad Efrat <elad at NetBSD.org>
To: netbsd-users at netbsd.org
CC: current-users at netbsd.org, netbsd-announce at netbsd.org, 
netbsd-advocacy at netbsd.org


Some of you who follow netbsd-bugs@ may noticed that over the past two
days we closed around 270 PRs (problem reports). That's quite a lot, and
I thought I might as well tell you what lead to that...

A few developers and myself had an idea to give a shot to something we
called a NetBSD Bugathon -- we figured if we could combine efforts
together, we could address some of the thousands of PRs we managed to
get open in the 13 or so years of NetBSD action so far.

So we did... we got on IRC (#NetBSD-code on irc.freenode.net if you're
interested) and started looking for PRs we knew how to deal with; slowly
more people came aboard, and we ended up brainstorming solutions to
various problems, solving them as we went. The word spread quite fast
and we suddenly had a few users helping us with the work as well.

All in all it's been fun, and the results are quite amazing; with
about 30 developers and 20 users we managed to get the number of "open"
PRs to below 4000 -- we started with almost 4200! -- in fact, the
results were so surprising given the short notice (if "meet you on IRC
in 12 hours" is a notice :), that we decided to let you know about
this, so you could take part the next time we do it.

Which is why I am going to ask you to reserve the October 7-8 weekend,
for that's when we'll be holding the next NetBSD Bugathon (oh, yeah,
"Reloaded!" ;) -- you are all welcome to join us, to help with the bug
hunting and fixing, or just to enjoy the atmosphere.

Keep in mind it'll be a great time to discuss live about features you
want to see, stuff that you'd like changed, problems you're seeing,
etc., or even your own set of "pet PRs" you'd *finally* like to see
resolved!

More information is available online:

	http://www.NetBSD.org/hackathon/

And if someone wants to see how the netbsd-bugs@ mailing list looks like
after 2 days of non-stop work:

	http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-bugs/2006/09/

(scroll down to 09/23/2006 and 09/24/2006... yeah, we should do
something about the archive format. ;)

Thanks to everyone who helped during the weekend making NetBSD better,
and hoping to see you all there. Remember:

	October 7-8, 2006 (Saturday-Sunday, two weeks from now!)
	irc.freenode.net
	#NetBSD-code

Have a great week,

-e.

-- 
Elad Efrat



-- 
Kind regards,

     Remko Lodder               ** remko at elvandar.org
     FreeBSD                    ** remko at FreeBSD.org

     /* Quis custodiet ipsos custodes */

----- End forwarded message -----