Re: issue tracker?

[Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>]

Hello,

Detlef Steuer <steuer@hsu-hh.de> writes:

> That leads to the next point: If Nicolas decided *he* would love to work
> with a bugtracker, I would not complain and open an account.
> As it is now, anything that's not in the best interest of our benevolent
> developer, should not even be considered :-)

Thank you for your consideration. However, the question of what bug
tracker to use is the maintainer's, not mine. Besides, just to avoid the
confusion, I'm not a diva ;) If it is obvious that a solution is good
for the project, I wouldn't dare opposing it.

Now, I think I should add a few data points:

- Many bug reports, and patches, are "lost" currently. Of course, they
  are still there, if you dig deep enough in the ML archives. But
  I doubt anyone would do that, so it is more realistic to consider them
  lost.

- As pointed out, Org has a bug tracker : Emacs' Debbugs. See
  <https://debbugs.gnu.org/Emacs.html>. Org users do not send bugs
  through it much. It is possibly a cultural thing. In these
  "package.el" days, people may forget that Org is also bundled with
  Emacs. The manual is not clear about it, too. In particular, this bug
  tracker can be used for any Org version, not necessarily the one
  bundled with Emacs. The good thing is that every bug sent there is
  also sent to our ML.

Now, after the facts, some personal rambling about it:

- I have no opinion on the fact that a bug tracker would bring more life
  to the project. It may be, but it is not obvious either. I'm not
  against it anyway.

- The mailing list is the central place in our project, and any
  discussion should all happen here, so that anyone can get involved. In
  particular, a "mini mailing-list" per bug number is not a good thing,
  if messages are not made public in the ML.

- A bug tracker without first-class support for Emacs—i.e., you can do
  anything from Emacs—is missing the point. Therefore, I agree that an
  email-based bug tracker is particularly suited.

- Debbugs has a nice, modern, front end, too: Mumi
  (<https://git.elephly.net/gitweb.cgi?p=software/mumi.git>). See for
  example <http://issues.guix.gnu.org/>.

- No matter what bug tracker (or lack thereof) is used, Org needs more
  reviewers, i.e., more users with write access to the repository.
  Receiving a ton of bug fixes is a certainly great, but is also
  discouraging when you realize you cannot possibly deal with all of
  them.

- Considering the previous point, I doubt switching to a bug tracker
  today would help handling more bug reports. It will induce more work,
  though. For example, some triage happens currently on the ML: if
  a so-called bug report is clearly a misunderstanding, someone here
  often helps the OP without the developers interfering. This never
  happens in the bug tracker Org has actually.

So, in a nutshell, if Bastien, or a future maintainer, decides that Org
project should seriously be using a bug tracker, I suggest to simply
advertise the current one, and add a Mumi interface somewhere.

As the final words, reviewers are welcome, too…

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou