Thanks Michael, this is a really nice summary.

One additional question: when looking at the open bugs, how do I know which
ones have already been already tested against Emacs 25?  I can see the
Emacs 25 blockers, but probably not all the bugs that are reproducible in
Emacs 25 are severe enough to be blockers, right?

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 3:58 AM Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
wrote:

> Andrew Hyatt <ahyatt@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> > 1) How to identify the bugs to be triaged. I actually don't know the
> > set of bugs you are interested in. All the open ones? Just the ones
> > blocking emacs 25? If I'm using the debbugs package, what's the
> > command I use to display just the set we're interested in?
>
> debbugs on elpa is under rewrite these days, so I haven't pushed yet a
> new version 0.8. Maybe you could download it from the elpa git?
>
> If you want to see just the open bugs, accept all default settings when
> calling "M-x debbugs-gnu". You will see all open bugs with severity
> serious, important or normal. 2142 lines just now.
>
> You can filter out the closed-but-not-archived-yet bugs by hitting "x"
> (1906 lines). Hitting "x" again, all bug reports are shown again.
>
> If you want to filter the bugs, type "/ regexp". The regexp matches
> strings in the report buffer. If you, for example, want to see all bugs
> with the string "tramp" in the title, type "/ tramp". This gives you 14
> lines. Typing "w" returns to the full list of bugs.
>
> If you type "R", you will see all bugs blocking the next Emacs
> release. 48 lines. You can combine it with a further "x", which results
> in 33 not closed bugs blocking Emacs 25.1 release. These are the most
> interesting bugs to be fixed.
>
> > 2) How to triage each bug. In this case, the basic task if clear: just
> > try to reproduce against emacs 25. But if it doesn't reproduce, what
> > then? Do we close the bug? I downloaded and started using the debbugs
> > package, but AFAICT, it's read-only. Seems like it should be obvious,
> > but I can't figure out how to close a bug in either debbugs package,
> > or in the web interface.
>
> If your cursor points to the bug line you want to handle, type "C". This
> starts a control message to be sent to the debbugs server. Use <TAB> for
> completion of possible actions.
>
> The debbugs elpa package comes with an info manual.
> Try (info "(debbugs-ug)") Some commands I've mentioned above are not
> documented in debbugs 0.7. See the info manual from the elpa repo.
>
> The file debbugs-gnu.el explains the keys also in its Commentary
> section.
>
> Best regards, Michael.
>