Bug Counts

As people have noticed, I’ve had much less time over the past month to work on Xfce. In some ways this is OK, because we’ve entered the 4.4 beta cycle, and theoretically all I should be doing is fixing bugs. Of course, every now and then I add a new feature, because, well, honoring my own feature freeze would just be too easy, wouldn’t it?

I guess part of the problem is that we don’t add any new features to the stable series after it hits point-oh. So the feature set that 4.4.0 has will be the same feature set that 4.4.1, 4.4.2, 4.4.3, etc. have. Couple that with the fact that our 4.evennumber.0 releases have been 14+ months apart, and I feel like way too much stuff brews in the development branch before we have a real feature release.

I’m not really sure of a good solution. All of us work on Xfce whenever we can. We all have day jobs or go to school, so it’s totally a free-time, unpaid endeavor at this point. It’s hard to do scheduling when no one can commit to any specific amount of time. And honestly, I don’t like working to those kinds of schedules. If I want to work with deadlines, I’ll get a job that requires me to do so. Oh wait: I already have a job like that, and it sucks.

Anyway, I actually sat down to write a post about bug counts (as you can see by the title), but I’ve digressed before I’ve even started. Go me.

Xfdesktop has had a good amount of changes lately, and therefore there have been a fair amount of bugs. I’d like to say my bug count is dropping, but it seems to be hovering pretty steadily around 20-22 bugs. Part of the problem is that some people keep logging new bugs after I close old ones. Not that I mind: I’d rather know about things and have a chance to fix them. But it’s hard to feel like I’m accomplishing things. Clicking on that Commit button after changing a bug’s status to Resolved feels good, but getting an email in my xfce bugs folder a half hour later with a subject line starting with “New” is starting to wear on me.

That’s not to say I don’t want to fix bugs. Keep ‘em coming. (The reports, not the bugs.)

On a side note, I’m really sad that I haven’t touched Xfmedia in many months. According to the svn log, I haven’t really made a significant code change in about 5 months. Also, I fear that I’ve made a few changes to the current trunk branch (basically just the latest stable release plus some fixes), and I haven’t carried them over to the experimental branch, which will eventually replace trunk. I probably won’t really have much time to work on Xfmedia until after Xfce 4.4.0 is out. Though I wonder if that’s just an excuse.

Anyway, just wanted to take a quick break. Back to work…