[rt-users] P.R. criteria

[Michael Brader]

Jesse <jesse at pallas.eruditorum.org> writes:

> How does aurema deal with linking RT and GNATS? 

Not at all currently :-) as our GNATS system (based on GNATS4) is
still pre-production. The new GNATS field definition file will allow
the creation of a "database" which has exactly the same structure as
an RT request which will facilitate the easy transfer from one system
to another. RT2's flexibility will make this easier as well.

The other (and most important to us) integration we are looking into
is associating requests with problem reports (PRs). When a PR arrives,
it quite often requires several separate tasks to be performed, some
of these will themselves be PRs, but some will be requests, either to
our sysadmins to sort something out, configuration managers to do a
build etc.

My plan is to have two fields within each PR:

Outstanding Requests which will be a list of requests raised as a
result of this PR that are not yet in RT's resolved state.

CompletedRequests will be a list of requests that are in RT's resolved
or closed state.

Initially, we'll put in a cron job which runs through the GNATS
database, checking those lists in each PR and moves requests from one
list to the other as appropriate.

I'm woefully behind on following RT2 development, but a feature which
we've added to GNATS4 is the ability to run arbitrary programs when a
field within a PR is changed. If RT had a similar feature (or the
ability to 'eval' some arbitrary Perl) when requests are changed, then
I would add a PR field to RT, ensure that it was set correctly when a
request is raised due to a particular PR and then when a requests'
state changes, connect to the GNATS daemon and move that request from
Outstanding to Completed or vice versa, removing the need to monitor
every problem report in GNATS every hour or so.

Associated with this, I'll probably add hooks into the GNATS web
interface where we can click on the requests in the two fields and be
taken into RT, and vice versa. And add a 'Create Request in queue'
button to the edit interface.

> Also, does gnats 4 use a database?

Not as yet, but the day when someone does the work has been factored
into the design in that if permissions are set up right, access to PRs
has been restricted to a single interface rather than letting anybody
scribble on the report files directly. Basically, take away write
access to the GNATS "database" directory and the only way to modify a
problem report is via the GNATS daemon.

-- 
Michael Brader
Aurema Pty Ltd (formerly Softway Pty Ltd)
PO Box 305, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012, Australia
Email:mbrader at aurema.com, Tel: +61 2 9698 2322, Fax: +61 2 9699 9174