I noticed that some metrics in our plugins do not have descriptions. I noticed this because I hovered over one (Platform's Free Memory) and the tool tip told me "there is no description for this metric". We should go through all our plugins and add descriptions so users won't see that useless popup on our own plugins.
this is easy to do and should be done for 1.2
An alternative approach would be to just use the display name as description when no description is given. Advantage is that this also works for plugins we don't have source for. This can be easily done in the Metric Metadata parser: Index: rhq/modules/core/client-api/src/main/java/org/rhq/core/clientapi/agent/me tadata/MetricsMetadataParser.java =================================================================== --- rhq/modules/core/client-api/src/main/java/org/rhq/core/clientapi/agent/metad ata/MetricsMetadataParser.java (revision 3292) +++ rhq/modules/core/client-api/src/main/java/org/rhq/core/clientapi/agent/metad ata/MetricsMetadataParser.java Thu Mar 05 14:08:26 CET 2009 @@ -111,12 +111,16 @@ dataType), dataType, NumericType.valueOf(metricDescriptor.getMeasur ementType().toUpperCase()), metricDescriptor.isDefaultOn(), collectionInterval, displayType); - definition.setDescription(metricDescriptor.getDescription()); if (metricDescriptor.getDisplayName() != null) { definition.setDisplayName(metricDescriptor.getDisplayName()); } else { definition.setDisplayName(StringUtils.deCamelCase(definition.getNam e())); } + if (metricDescriptor.getDescription() != null) { + definition.setDescription(metricDescriptor.getDescription()); + } else { + definition.setDescription(definition.getDisplayName()); + } definition.setDestinationType(metricDescriptor.getDestinationType());
The patch from the last comment has been committed in rev3295
granted, adding the name to the description field would give it some value, but since the name will always be displayed alongside the description it would only add redundancy for the sake of getting rid of empty table cells. we should spend the necessary time to fill in all of the missing descriptions properly.
Ok.
rev3473 - add descriptions to all metrics missing them;
I'm not going to be able to check every single metric, but I checked the one specifically mentioned in this jira (plat free mem) and will keep an eye out for other missing descriptions, and file issues separately.
This bug was previously known as http://jira.rhq-project.org/browse/RHQ-1599