[cvsnt] Bug id format?

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Matthew McClellan wrote:

>>> is the bug id a string or a number?
>> 
>> As Tony indicated it is stored in the RCS file as an ID, so it could
>> be anything.  However at various points in the code it is treated as
>> an integer - so best to stick to numbers only.  The 'message to
>> bugid' stuff in the current commercial release that should be in the
>> next CVSNT release also treats it as an integer (I think some of the
>> patches I submitted to TortoiseCVS may also treat it as an integer).
>> 
>> It would have been 'better' to treat it as a string all along, and
>> the RCS format gives us that option in future - it's particularly
>> tricky to integrate to bug systems like JIRA that use a 'prefix' on
>> the bug number - however it does have it's advantages too (even in
>> Jira it really is a bug number with a project prefix and treating
>> the bug number as a bug number means it can be used cross project).

Yes, but I'm not sure what in the case of Jira using a number cross
project would do good -- issue "PJA-123" is likely to be about something
completely unrelated to issue "PJB-123" :)  So if you have code related
to several tracker projects in the same repository, that can get
confusing.


> I just recently started using the "Mark Bug" feature, and we happen to
> be using JIRA for most of our development issue tracking.  In our
> current environment we have a few separate projects in JIRA whose
> code is all managed in the same CVSNT repository - running
> 2.5.04.3226; this particular senario needs that prefix to be included
> in the "Bug Number" textbox on commit - otherwise there would be no
> way of matching that Bug to the correct JIRA project.  Anyway, so far
> things have worked great; the CVSNT audit database correctly stores
> the entire string in the BugId column, the commit messages are
> consistently correct, TortoiseCVS (from March-Hare) must be sending
> the Bug Number correctly too, and even CVSMailer can find the Bug
> comment and add the correct link to the JIRA issue in the email
> messages.

Thanks for the success report from the trenches :)

Gerhard