SourceGear's Tag List

Posted by Jeremy Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:27:00 GMT

In the comments for the post on Tag Clouds, I mentioned one of my goals was to actually provide the “standard” list of tags we use internally. These are tags that we use to imply priority, so that everyone on the team can look at a bug, see which tags apply to it and immediately know what priority the bug should be. I should also reiterate that a bug which was assigned a lower priority because of a tag like Trivial or Grammar will still get fixed more quickly than some higher-priority bugs. Tags are a labeling mechanism that makes them easier to find.

Bugs:

  • PO
    • Blocker: This bug is preventing others within the company from fixing or testing on other items. The item has a time-critical context that supersedes the perceived priority.
  • P1
    • Data Corruption: Any error, whether GUI or API, where server data is or can be corrupted.
    • Broken Beyond Repair: Product feature does not work. No workaround exists
    • Server Crash: Server crash of any kind.
    • Obvious Client Crash: Client crash that is both reproducible and frequent
    • Legal: Errors in wording or use of copyrighted material that presents legal ramifications.
    • First Impression: Issues occurring in the first hour of use that negatively affect sales.
  • P2
    • Broken Causing Pain: Product feature is impacted, but the existing workaround requires extra steps or is impractical.
    • Odd Client Crash: Client crash that is either reproducible or frequent
    • Performance: Performance issues that are common.
    • Support Headache: Small or medium impact, but creates substantial confusion and high support load.
    • Fairly Common: Particular aspect of subfeature not working as designed, and likely to be seen by several customers.
  • P3
    • Broken with Workaround: Product functionality is impacted, but a viable workaround exists.
    • Embarrassing: Impact is small or negligible, but visibility presents poor company image.
    • Broken on Goofy System: Usability not present on certain older systems or non-prevalent machine setups.
    • Well Contained: Particular aspect of sub-feature not working as designed.
    • Odd Performance: Performance issues due to large or odd setups.
    • Not User Friendly: Incorrect error messages likely to produce some support load.
    • Unlikely, but Severe: Infrequent order of steps causes serious error.
  • P4
    • Bug on Goofy System: Usability reduced on certain older systems or non-prevalent machines setups.
    • Hand-Holding: Product functionality doesn’t match user expectations, needs better alerts or help.
    • Grammar: Incorrect or awkward titles or wordings in dialogs.
    • Trivial: Feature impact is small or negligible, and not embarrassing.
    • Phase of the Moon: Infrequent set up steps causes small error.

It has benefited us to make the priority guidelines for feature separate from bugs. In fact there have been times when trying and failing to find the appropriate bug-tags to put on an incoming item has caused me to think “That’s no bug… That’s a feature request!”

Features:

  • FO
    • Blocker: This feature is preventing others within the company from fixing or testing on other items. The item has a time-critical context that supersedes the perceived priority.
  • F1
    • Very Popular: Many people would be positively and substantially impacted by this addition. We have so many requests for this; we need a really good reason why NOT to add it.
    • Internal Consistency: This feature would allow different clients to work the same as their counterparts.
    • Preventative: The program works in a reasonable manner, yet certain bizarre work habits or program interactions will cause problems. This feature will prevent those from occurring.
  • F2
    • Extra Steps: Not having the feature forces the user to stop and figure out how to do what he intended to do by navigating through extra steps
    • Exceeds Expectations: This feature’s existence pleasantly surprises the user, creating customer loyalty.
    • First Impression: Feature additions that positively impact the first hour of use and therefore raise sales.
    • Administration: This feature helps the IT guys maintain Vault with less hassle.
    • Worthy: Many people would be positively or substantially impacted by this addition.
  • F3
    • Graceful: Functionality is not significant, but visibility presents good company image.
    • User Friendly: Better help or error messages likely to reduce customer annoyance or support load.
    • Performance: Adding this feature will improve program speed.
    • VSSConsistency: It needs to work like VSS does.
  • F4
    • Options: Users would like another way to manage his workflow.
    • Useful: Small featurette provides utility for a subset of customers.
    • Odd Configurations: Usability requested for certain odd program interactions, or unsupported systems.
  • F5
    • Diversion: It’s a reasonable request, but it doesn’t quite fit in with our company direction.
    • Misguided: A user is asking for something that ultimately would be a poor choice.
    • Behemoth: While this is a reasonable request, implementing it would take excessive work and have consequences that will spiral out of control in terms of bugs.

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DiffMerge 3.1 beta

Posted by Jeremy Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:49:00 GMT

We’ve been hard at work on a new version of DiffMerge, which will address many of the issues that people have brought up with our initial release. Here’s a list of the big changes:

  • Windows Shell Extension: Added integration with Windows Shell/Explorer. A ‘Compare with DiffMerge’ menu item was added to the Windows Explorer right-mouse context menu for files and folders. This feature can be enabled/disabled from the Options dialog.

  • Changed Installer: The .MSI installer is now generated using Advanced Installer. This fixed several installation-related problems, especially on Vista. Administrative privileges are still required for installation, but under Vista, the installer will use the privilege elevation mechanism so that you don’t need to be logged in as an administrator to start the installation. If you do not have administrator access to your machine, please use the .ZIP package.

  • Items Placed on Clipboard Remain after Exit: We no longer clear the clipboard when DiffMerge exits.

  • Fixed Various Crashes: Fixed various crashes when windows were closed using the ESC key while the mouse was captured. Fixed crash after auto-merge. Fixed various crashes on Mac OS X when comparing files or folders whose pathnames contained special characters.

  • Added Batch Output Option: Added the ability to use DiffMerge as a command line tool and produce traditional or Unified differences of two files to an output file rather than opening a window. The output is compatible with GNU diff(1) and patch(1).

  • Added ‘Save As’ Feature: Added File|Save As… feature to editable windows. The editable file is written to the new pathname and the window titles are updated. Changed behavior of ‘/result:pathname’ to behave like ‘Save As’ (and re-title windows) whenever possible.

  • Added Force-Write Feature: Added code to attempt (after prompting) to override the on-disk file permissions when trying to write to a file that is read-only.

  • Added Backward Searching and Wrap Around to Find Dialog

  • Scrolling from Glance Window: Clicking and dragging in the glance window on the left now cause the file windows to scroll; previously we only scrolled the file windows on clicks.

You can download this new version at our DiffMerge downloads page and read the full release notes.

If you try this new beta, give us your feedback by replying to this post, or over on our support forum. We hope to officially release DiffMerge 3.1 in the next few weeks.

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