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Bug 445524

Summary: Use Bugzilla's Whiteboard field to return short messages to reporters
Product: [Technology] EPP Reporter: Marcel Bruch <marcel.bruch>
Component: Automated Error Reporting Client (AERI)Assignee: Project inbox <recommenders-inbox>
Status: CLOSED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P3 CC: denis.roy
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Example feedback dialog showing some more details about the error none

Description Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-09-30 10:31:20 EDT 
The whiteboard field allows a specify a one-line message for each bug. We may use this field to send a short message back to the reporter.

The whiteboard field may contain an url to a forum or SO page or a brief explanation how to work around this error.

E.g. for the error message "Resource is out of sync" it may give a reporter the reply:

 
Do you know that Eclipse can automatically keep workspace resources in sync with underlying file system?  To enable this, go to Preferences > General > Workspace > Refresh using native hooks and polling".

Thoughts?
Comment 1 Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-09-30 10:34:31 EDT 
Created attachment 247491 [details]
Example feedback dialog showing some more details about the error
Comment 2 Denis Roy CLA 2014-09-30 10:48:14 EDT 
As I mentioned in another bug, Mylyn uses Bugzilla attachments to store context.  There is also a generic "tags" field that can be used.
Comment 3 Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-09-30 10:52:31 EDT 
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #2)
> As I mentioned in another bug, Mylyn uses Bugzilla attachments to store
> context.  There is also a generic "tags" field that can be used.

Tags are only visible to the user who wrote them. The idea is that committers/QA contact may provide a description what's the problem and how to solve it which can be read by everyone.

I think this makes tags not appropriate for this task.
Comment 4 Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-09-30 10:55:14 EDT 
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #2)
> As I mentioned in another bug, Mylyn uses Bugzilla attachments to store
> context. 

attachments cannot be created from within the bugzilla front-end. Creating attachments would thus require some client / management UI. I've no concrete plans for this until now but maybe some time later...

At the moment I try to reuse as much of the existing infrastructure as possible. Does the whiteboard text field has a size limitation?
Comment 5 Denis Roy CLA 2014-09-30 11:05:24 EDT 
It is a MEDIUMTEXT field, so 16M according to the docs.

A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.
Comment 6 Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-09-30 11:42:02 EDT 
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #5)
> A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.

Should suffice. Even for the garrulous-ishest committer.
Comment 7 Marcel Bruch CLA 2014-10-02 10:04:42 EDT 
Server-side now synchronizes the contents of the whiteboard field and returns its content to the user sending a report. The client needs to be update to present this information. The server-side part is done. closing. thanks for the input.