Bug 1298053

Summary: Disable SeeAlso and migrate content to External Trackers.
Product: [Community] Bugzilla Reporter: Jeff Fearn ๐Ÿž <jfearn>
Component: Bugzilla GeneralAssignee: Jeff Fearn ๐Ÿž <jfearn>
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE QA Contact: tools-bugs <tools-bugs>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 4.4CC: awilliam, fweimer, huiwang, jfearn, jmcdonal, kdreyer, kparal, ltoscano, mkolman, mtahir, praiskup, qgong, rcyriac, samuel-rhbugs, sanjay.ankur, swadeley
Target Milestone: 5.0   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-04-18 05:02:11 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description Jeff Fearn ๐Ÿž 2016-01-13 05:28:56 UTC
Description of problem:
Complaints have been received about the duplication of external linking. Disable the SeeALso field and migrate existing see-also links to External Trackers.

Comment 1 Jeff Fearn ๐Ÿž 2016-01-13 05:30:46 UTC
Part of the redhat/upgrades/bz5-cleanup.pl script that handles the BZ4->5 DB upgrade.

Comment 2 Hui Wang 2016-03-18 07:30:29 UTC
Verified this issue.
The result is PASS.
5.0.2.rh2

Steps:
1. Check the new bug field, it has no SeeAlso field.
2. Choose a bug that has SeeAlso values, like https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=778004. Verify this bug's SeeAlso data was migrated to External Tracker in bz-5.0

Comment 3 Adam Williamson 2018-12-18 02:04:24 UTC
:( But I was using "See Also" extensively for referring to *related* bugs *within* RH Bugzilla. Not a duplication with the intended purpose of "External Trackers" at all.

To my mind:

External Trackers: other places where the same issue is being tracked (e.g. Debian's bug for the same issue, or the same issue in the upstream project's own tracker)

See Also: related bugs that aren't duplicates (those should be CLOSED DUPLICATE) or in a strict "dependency" relationship (so you can use the "Blocks:" / "Depends On:" fields)

AFAICS, current Bugzilla has *no* appropriate replacement for the way I was using See Also.

Comment 4 Florian Weimer 2018-12-18 09:03:41 UTC
(In reply to Adam Williamson from comment #3)
> :( But I was using "See Also" extensively for referring to *related* bugs
> *within* RH Bugzilla. Not a duplication with the intended purpose of
> "External Trackers" at all.

I used it extensively for symmetric references with automatic backlinking from the referenced bugs.  As far as I can see, external trackers do not provide that (unless I update both bugs manually).

Comment 5 Luigi Toscano 2018-12-18 10:38:17 UTC
I definitely remember that it was proposed to drop External Trackers in favor of SeeAlso, few years ago (~2012). The rationale was that SeeAlso was supported upstream.
At that time I objected mainly because the External Trackers were going away without even asking with the people using them, thus breaking various workflows.

Now it happened again, with no discussion, but on the other way. I would say that this change was not handled in the best possible way.

Comment 6 Ken Dreyer (Red Hat) 2019-01-07 21:26:07 UTC
(In reply to Florian Weimer from comment #4)
> I used it extensively for symmetric references with automatic backlinking
> from the referenced bugs.  As far as I can see, external trackers do not
> provide that (unless I update both bugs manually).

Ditto - the best thing about "See Also" in RHBZ 4 was that I could easily update both bugs at the same time. This is how Jira works - when I link one issue, it updates both issues. Could we please have this behavior with Bugzilla 5?

Comment 7 Pavel Raiskup 2019-01-17 10:52:56 UTC
New bugzilla has "voting", but there's no down-wote possibility.
So -1 for removing "see-also" from me.

Comment 8 Kamil Pรกral 2019-01-28 09:49:20 UTC
Jeff, can we please reconsider this decision? "See Also" was an essential field for QA people (at least speaking for our team). The current implementation of External Trackers doesn't allow the same functionality, and it also has a different meaning. A possible improvement to the current state would be to implement bug 1666269 (but I wonder it it's not easier to bring See Also back). Thanks.

Comment 9 Jeff Fearn ๐Ÿž 2019-01-29 00:48:14 UTC
(In reply to Kamil Pรกral from comment #8)
> Jeff, can we please reconsider this decision? "See Also" was an essential
> field for QA people (at least speaking for our team). The current
> implementation of External Trackers doesn't allow the same functionality,
> and it also has a different meaning. A possible improvement to the current
> state would be to implement bug 1666269 (but I wonder it it's not easier to
> bring See Also back). Thanks.

I will pass this request up the chain.