Rails bug reports & patches - why no action?

Rails
1

I have noticed at the dev.rubyonrails.org site that many tickets with
pretty clear-cut bug reports/patches or feature enhancements don’t get
any attention. They sit there for months at a time. Why is this? Are
tickets from those that are not in rails-core deprioritized? Are there
just not enough people that have the power to act on tickets? I know
it’s not lack of test cases because I see tickets with test cases
attached that are also ignored.

It seems like just some sort of response would be helpful, even if it is
as simple as “we are not going to add/fix this at this time”.

For example:

http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/6684
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/4918
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/4807 (this got a response, but no
subsequent action)
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/5388

2

I am curious about this as well. I submitted a patch with test cases 4
months ago, it got looked at after about 3 or 4 weeks, and needed a fix.
I fixed it and it’s been sitting there for 3 months.

I think “not enough people/time” is a valid reason for why patches don’t
get applied, but it would be helpful to know that so that people who
submit patches can understand more about the process. I just submitted
another patch last week, and I have no idea when/if it will be applied.

Wes

3

On 1/23/07, Frank K. [email protected] wrote:

as simple as “we are not going to add/fix this at this time”.
It takes a lot of time to go through and respond to tickets. Even
those that are ready for primetime sap up a lot of your time. For
instance, I spent almost 2 hours last night (Heroes, FTW!) going
through some patches that were mostly doc patches and test cases and
only made a tiny, unnoticeable dent.

–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com

4

Rick O. wrote:

It takes a lot of time to go through and respond to tickets. Even
those that are ready for primetime sap up a lot of your time.

That is totally understandable. I guess my question still remains though

  • is it simply a numbers problem? Not enough people able to act on
    tickets?