Re: debbugs?

[Thomas Weber]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 02:37:07PM +0100, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> In Debian, there are two handy commands "reportbug" and "bts" that easy the
> handling of bugs in the Debian Bug Tracking System.  We could perhaps create
> variants of the tools for the Octave BTS, such that user interaction will be
> simplified.
> 
> At any rate, using debugs should not be too complicated. If I understand
> correctly, the current Octave tracker should work like this:
> 
> * Creating a bug report:
>   Send a email message to address@hidden with a
>   pseudo-header "Package: octave"

That already requires first time bug submitters to learn about debbugs.
We can mitigate this somewhat by Octave's bug_report(), but my
impression is that most bug reports aren't sent that way currently.
Also, a web=>mail interface might intercept most problems.

> * Adding a comment to bug report:  
>   Send a email message to <nnn>@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com, where <nnn> is
>   the bug number.

Yes, and that's where debbugs sucks. Commenters aren't put into any sort
of 'default mail' list, so you have to add them to CC (especially
painful if several comment on different sub-threads).

Don't get me wrong, I actually like debbugs. It has some pretty unique
features (like "send me all bugs onto my local harddisk for the
journey), automatically marking bugs as pending/closed, and so on. But
I'm uneasy using it for Octave.

        Thomas