Re: about bug tracking

[David Turner]

Hi Werner,

> 
> > I currently haven't the time to do it right now, but I'd be happy if
> > someone could provide a solution that is simple to install ??  (by
> > the way, I'm using qmail on the server, soon switching to postfix)
> 
> As a first step we should probably go the GNU way by introducing a
> ChangeLog file.  Attached is a script `commit' which should be used
> instead of `cvs commit'; it checks whether there is a valid entry in
> the ChangeLog file, and it automatically produces correct CVS log file
> entries from the ChangeLog file.
> 
> This file could then be made available from the web site.
> 
> Any objections to this?  I use it very successfully for maintainance
> and development of groff.
> 
The only objection is that I'm using WinCVS when I'm doing work on
Windows NT, so running a Unix shell script from there will not be
easy nor intuitive.

Besides, I'm pretty certain than Just will simply not feel confident
with this on his Mac.. !!

> If we agree (and I hope so), I'll create this file.  Note that Emacs
> provides a very nice interface to produce ChangeLog entries
> on-the-fly.
>
I'm no Emacs fan anyway, which means that I'll have to type anything
by hand. What's the format of a ChangeLog ? I'll try too lookup the
GNU sites for documentation..

My general idea is that we should try _really_ hard to rely on tools
that are widely available and relatively easy to use. That's one of
the reasons why the Python script "docmaker.py" exists: it runs on
all platforms (as Python) and doesn't depend on some strange libraries
or platform dependencies.. otherwise, we'd be using "linuxdoc" or
"sgmltools", "gnomedoc" or watherver..

In case you wondered, using GNU make for the build system is at the
limit of this idea. Some days, I'm beginning to wonder wether it's
not time to write a Python script to handle make + configure +
library dependencies that would work on all platforms and not
require a command line shell.. but I digress ;-)

If there is no way to use a GNU ChangeLog on Windows and the Mac,
we can forget about it. However, it we can convert the "commit"
script to some simple Python program, I'd reconsider this position !!

Any idea ??

- David