Launchpad itself

comment numbers have changed! - corrupting bug reports

Bug #669722 reported by Wolfgang Kufner
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

The numbering for comments in some, presumably many, bug reports has changed. I think this is caused by comment imports from (at least) freedesktop (of the form: "In freedesktop.org Bugzilla #27589, Robert Hooker wrote on 2010-04-11:"). I do not know whether they are new or just had no numbers before, but now they are numbered and as a consequence the numbers of all later comments shift upwards. Corrupting referrals to comments by number.

Example:
bug 538648
What is now comment #92:
>Andy Whitcroft wrote on 2010-05-17: #92
>I have built some test kernels...
was originally comment #88
as can be seen from comments #97, #99, #100, #138, which refer to it.

Example 2:
bug 542660: the comment that is now #36 points to the comment that was #24, but is now #35.
This is caused by the 11 "In freedesktop.org Bugzilla..." comments before it, I believe.

Severity: corrupting bug reports is pretty bad, mitigated seemingly by the fact that the great majority of the reports with new numbers do not include such referrals by number to comments.
Urgency: in bug 538648 the referral to former comment #88 in the bug description has already been "fixed" by someone. so if the comment numbering were now changed back it would then be wrong.

See original description
Tags: lp-bugs
Wolfgang Kufner (wolfgangkufner)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Gavin Panella (allenap) wrote :

I think we should abandon sequential comment numbering, and only provide stable links for comments based on their primary keys. This would also remove a lot of complexity from the code.

Changed in malone:
importance: Undecided → High
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Stuart Bishop (stub) wrote : Re: [Bug 669722] Re: comment numbers have changed! - corrupting bug reports

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Gavin Panella
<email address hidden> wrote:
> I think we should abandon sequential comment numbering, and only provide
> stable links for comments based on their primary keys. This would also
> remove a lot of complexity from the code.

This will break a lot of existing links - I've seen numerous bug
reports referencing earlier comments by number, and URLs posted to
forums to particular comments containing a howto or problem solution.

--
Stuart Bishop <email address hidden>
http://www.stuartbishop.net/

Revision history for this message
Gavin Panella (allenap) wrote :

> This will break a lot of existing links - I've seen numerous bug
> reports referencing earlier comments by number, and URLs posted to
> forums to particular comments containing a howto or problem
> solution.

I think we could support navigation for sequentially numbered comments
so that old links don't break (though, as this bug demonstrates,
they're breaking already).

New comment paths would probably have to have a different form, say:

  /malone/+bug/669722/+comment/5477388

Sequential comment paths would redirect to the new paths:

  /malone/+bug/669722/comments/1 -->
    /malone/+bug/669722/+comment/5477388

Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote :

This is going to impact the stored bug sequence numbers for which
there is now database space.

Perhaps we need a design discussion on the list? Or perhaps a voice call?

Finalising this is critical path for making bug pages load faster
(because loading all the comments is hideously expensive on e.g. bug
1).

Revision history for this message
Deryck Hodge (deryck) wrote :

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Robert Collins
<email address hidden> wrote:
> This is going to impact the stored bug sequence numbers for which
> there is now database space.
>
> Perhaps we need a design discussion on the list? Or perhaps a voice
> call?

Without any thought whatsoever to how hard this is to do, my reaction
is to want to display imported comments inline according to timeline
but not assign them a comment number for the bug. I'm not sure the
direct link for imported comments is useful anyway. It should be the
main external comment that is direct link, IMHO.

Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote :

The renumbering has been stopped: we now store the bug index persistently in the database and don't renumber. Of course this could change in the future, but for now imported comments will, regardless of their date, just turn up at the end of the collection.

Changed in launchpad:
status: Triaged → Fix Released
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