Re: TaskList - Some questions

Hi Dusan,
I hope you don't mind that I cc dev@tasklist on this.

Dusan Pavlica wrote:
> Hi Tor,
> First I would like to say that Tasklist is great feature! :)
> 
> I have tested your last version of tasklist from CVS and I would like to 
> ask about something:
> I tested that new feature about bugs obtained from Issuezila. But first 
> check of my bugs (query with assignto parameter) cost so much time (1,5 
> hour) and at the end I got mass of bugs but not only assigned to me. 
> Does it able to discern bugs which are assigned to some email or it 
> doesn't implemented yet ?

The bug feature currently requires -you- to provide the exact query
to be run. So if the query isn't returning the exact bugs you want,
double check the URL you're passing in.  I thought this dialog should
already have been shown when you ran the window the first time. Here's
the code, perhaps there's a problem (or perhaps the explanatory text
is unclear):

        // Do a bug query
        String query = null;
        query = System.getProperty("netbeans.tasklist.bugquery");
        if (query == null) {
            // TEMPORARY HACK     TODO
            TopManager.getDefault().notify(new NotifyDescriptor.Message("Tasklist bug summary:\nAdd -J-Dnetbeans.tasklist.bugquery=<query>\nto your runide.sh startup arguments. (This is\nobviously only a temporary hack solution until\nI've added a query customizer.)\n\nTo determine what query to use, go to issuezilla:\n   http://www.netbeans.org/issues/query.cgi\nand create a custom query. Then, add that query as <query> above.\n\nAnd don't forget to make sure to set your\nproxies if you're behind a firewall! You can do that through Tools -> Setup Wizard."));
            return;
        } else {
            // See if I should strip out the prefix
            if (query.startsWith("http://www.netbeans.org/issues/buglist.cgi?")) {
                query = query.substring(43);
            }
        }

> I realized that parameters by bugs in list are read only and Do you 
> think (or plan) that some of them could be read/write in the future ?
> It means...will you be able synchronize changes with Issuezila ? I 
> talked to our webmaster and he said that it's not easy to implement it 
> thru Issuezila.

Yes, that would be nice. I think Ethan wanted to work on implementing
this (because he has a writable HTTP system or something like that).
I'm not sure if he's still interested in doing this, but he mentioned
it relatively recently (in the last month I believe).

> Do you plan to add start/end dates properties to dialog for define 
> period of User tasks and more categories by defined tasks ?

Yes, there's an open ENHANCEMENT request in issuezilla for that.
It's what I was going to work on next, after I implement the calendar
data loaders proposal I mentioned on this alias. (I also have a few
changes in my CVS tree that I want to finish, such as Martin's
requested feature of accumulating items in the source scan list.)

> And what do you think about usage tasklist like info area for calls user 
> attention to possible refactoring of code as well ?

I really want this. I have another issue filed in issuezilla for me
to create a good public api (org.netbeans.api.tasklist) such that other
modules can start adding tasks as they see fit. Then a refactoring
or code analysis module (such as the "audit" module in the contrib cvs
module) can use them to populate the tasklist.  There's also the related
"transient" task feature, where it temporarily offers some task which
looks useful, but once it's no longer useful it's removed. My canonical
example here is that the "helper" module could sit and look at the IDE,
and if it for example sees that a compilation error occurred in the
output window, and it's due to some missing class, it checks the import
tool and if the class is known offers "import foo into Bar.java" as
a task. After a while this task offer disappears.

Unfortunately I've had very little time to work on the tasklist lately.
And today my third child was born so I'm not sure I will have much spare
time in the near future. Most of the tasklist has been written on my
laptop while commuting to work, but for the last 3 weeks my laptop has
been in the shop for repair.

-- Tor