User Survey for Perforce/Bugzilla Integration

1. Introduction

This document describes the result of a survey of Perforce customers who also use Bugzilla, asking for information about their uses of Bugzilla and Perforce and for their integration requirements. The survey questionnaire was sent out on 2000-10-26.

The purpose of this document is to generate requirements for the Perforce/Bugzilla integration.

The intended readership of this document is anyone working on the project.

This document is not confidential.

2. Survey Text

The Perforce Defect Tracking Integration project <URL: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/> has started work on Bugzilla integration. I am gathering information about Bugzilla and Perforce use to help direct this work. If you use Bugzilla and Perforce, please take the time to complete this brief questionnaire. Please reply directly to me. I will send a summary of responses to the list.

If you know anyone else using Bugzilla and Perforce, please feel free to forward this questionnaire to them. The better our knowledge of your requirements, the better the integration will be.

Note that the Perforce Defect Tracking Integration project is completely open: you can download our code, documentation, project plans, etc. The integration will be free and Open Source: you will be able to modify it to suit your needs.

1. What version of Bugzilla do you use? On what platform (hardware, operating system)?
2. Have you modified Bugzilla to suit your requirements? If so, please describe the modifications.
3. Do you use any third-party modifications to Bugzilla (e.g. the Oracle back-end)?
4. Do your users only access Bugzilla through web clients, or do you also use email or other means to communicate with Bugzilla?
5. Do you run more than one instance of Bugzilla (i.e. more than one bugs database)? If so, please give more information. How is work divided between the instances?
6. How many Bugzilla users do you have? Are all your Bugzilla users also Perforce users?
7. How many bugs do you manage with Bugzilla?
8. What version of the Perforce server are you running? On what platform? Do you run it on the same machine as Bugzilla?
9. Do you run more than one Perforce server? If so, please give more information. How is work divided between the servers?
10. How many Perforce users do you have? Are all your Perforce users also Bugzilla users?
11. How many files do you manage with Perforce?
12. How many changelists do you manage with Perforce?
13. Do you have any Perforce/Bugzilla integration at present? If so, please describe it.
14. What would you want from a Perforce/Bugzilla integration? Do our current project requirements reflect your needs? <URL: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/req/> Please feel free to comment at length on your requirements.
15. Would you be willing to act as an alpha and/or beta test site for our integration? This may involve a fairly structured test program, possibly with site visits from our consultants.
16. May I publish your replies to this questionnaire as part of the project documentation? If so, do you require me to anonymize them?

3. Survey Results

All but one of the responders asked to be anonymized, so I have chosen to anonymize them all.

4. Survey Analysis

The main results are as follows:

• Users want basic bug/job integration, such that creating a bug creates a job, assigning a bug assigns the job, and closing a job marks the bug as RESOLVED/FIXED. Happily, this is exactly the form of integration provided by the P4DTI at present.
• Bugzilla is used on a variety of platforms, including Windows. We ought to provide a non-Linux distribution (e.g. .tar.gz)
• It is commonplace to have Perforce users who are not Bugzilla users and vice versa.
• Modifications to the Bugzilla schema and code are commonplace. It seems likely that users will want the integration to make schema extensions available in Perforce.
• Multiple Perforce or Bugzilla servers are unusual.
• Users are generally prepared to act as beta testers for the integration.

5. Conclusions

The P4DTI Bugzilla integration as it stands should address the needs of these users. There are no startling results. job000093 must be addressed, to allow the replication into Perforce jobs of a user-specified set of fields from Bugzilla. job000163 must be addressed, to further support the replication of Bugzilla login_names into Perforce.

Copyright © 2000 Ravenbrook Limited. This document is provided "as is", without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this document. You may make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided that you do not charge a fee for this document or for its distribution.