Here's how this thing (which has been named Roundup in honour
of another venerable issue-tracking program) works.

All issues are given an id that consists of a category
and a number.  Examples are "PLUG3" or "LIGHT12".  If you
go to the web page for a particular issue, say

    http://whatever.../roundup.cgi/PLUG5

you'll see that each issue also has the following fields:

    description:  Short, one-line summary of the issue.

    priority:     How urgent the issue is.

    status:       What's happening with this issue right now.

    fixer:        The person who's fixing the problem.
                  (Can be a userid, or can be blank.)

    nosy:         List of people who are interested in the issue.
                  (A comma-separated list of userids.)

    notes:        Log of notes about the issue.  Adding a note
                  from the web page does not send mail.

    mail:         Log of mail about the issue.

If you change any of the fields and hit "save changes", a
note is made that records the time and the changes you made.
Or you can just make a note.  Or you can change the fields and
write a little note explaining why you did, then hit "save
changes" to do both at once.


The priority levels are:

    1-critical:   Showstopper. Work cannot proceed. Panic now. 

    2-urgent:     Important bug causing a loss of work or feature
                  desperately needed. 

    3-bug:        Application does the wrong thing. Problem cannot
                  be reasonably worked around. 

    4-feature:    Application can't do something you would like it to do. 

    5-wish:       Things that would be nice to have. Bugs that are
                  avoidable. Missing features with acceptable workarounds. 


The possible status values are:

    unread:       No one has looked at the issue yet.

    chatting:     It's not yet clear either what the real problem is
                  or how it should be solved.  People are discussing
                  the issue. 

    deferred:     Someone has looked at the issue and decided to deal
                  with it later.

    need-eg:      Fixer is looking for a good test case.  It may be
                  helpful to send more information about the problem.

    in-progress:  Fixer is working on the problem.

    testing:      We think this bug/feature has been fixed, but we are
                  still testing.  It should be "resolved" in the next tryme.

    resolved:     This bug/feature is fixed in the current tryme.

    done-cbb:     Like "resolved", this is fixed in the current
                  tryme, but we may revisit the issue later.


Roundup is deeply integrated with e-mail because we discuss so
many things in that medium.

If a category is specified but no number is given, Roundup creates
a new bug id and forwards the message to the entire group.  The
subject line is used as the description of the bug.  It is also
possible to specify "priority=", "status=", "fixer=", or "nosy="
on the subject line in square brackets.

If an actual bug id is given, Roundup saves the message in the
archive for that issue and forwards the message to the fixer (if
there is one) and all the people on the "nosy" list.  It tries to
avoid resending the message to people already listed in the "To:"
or "Cc:" fields of the original message.

The idea is to collect the conversations we have about bugs and
features and to try to keep them organized.  See the other message
for more about the workflow i had in mind.


This is all an experimental one-day hack, so comments on this
idea and suggestions on how to make it work better are welcomed.



-- ?!ng