Re: Emacs project mission (was Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [

["Per Starbäck" <per@starback.se>]

Michael Albinus wrote:
> You could argue that the web-based issue trackers are more fancy. But
> this is the problem: they are web-based. I'm using Emacs, and I want to
> tackle my problems with Emacs.

I think report-emacs-bug should be done with Emacs *and* be web-based.

My vision is that Emacs should talk to the bug database over the net
by contacting it via http(s).There should be an interface that could
show a buffer with information about a specific bug. (That page would
among other things mention the url where you can see the same
information in a general web browser.) There should be a command in
Emacs to search the bug database. The result of such a search can be
compared for example to the *Packages* buffer when doing M-x
package-list-packages. It lists resources that are available on the
net. By clicking on them you get more information about them. You can
mark bugs you are interested in and they are highlighted. Which bugs
you are interested in are stored in some file in .config/emacs/ and
when you last visited them, so you can get special highlight if it has
been updated since you last visisted it.

With report-emacs-bug you start writing a bug report for entering in
the database. When you end it (with C-c C-c) you may get to see a list
of possibly related bugs first and asked if it's a duplicate of any of
those. After you've entered it you see it highlighted in a list of
bugs, so you can immediately see what your report actually resulted
in. Of course the bug you reported will be marked. I think the list to
show should after reporting a bug should be the list of bugs you
marked ordered by when they were last changed, so the bug you just
reported would come first.

There should be a main Emacs bug buffer from where you can search,
bring up predefined lists, like "marked bugs", "latest reported bugs",
"latest updated bugs", and report a new bug.

-*-
These are a lot of wishes with no code. I think the general idea is
sound, though. Reporting, viewing and searching are all important
activities with bugs. It's unfortunate if we only have a way to do one
of those three directly from Emacs and that they are not tied
together. And I think that it's not necessary to see mail as the most
natural way for Emacs to communicate with the outside anymore.