Re: Unanswered Emacs Problem Reports 40+ Months

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Would this be a totally automatic process, in which every old, open bug
> report simply gets a mail asking the OP to confirm it is still relevant?

I think so, yes.

> Because I'm not sure that is a very useful thing to do. I don't like it
> when eg certain distributions automatically close all bugs filed against
> previous releases unless people confirm they still exist in the latest
> release.

We're not talking about closing the bugs, but confirming that the bug is
still relevant.  Tho, in the absence of a reply by the bug-submitter
within a month (say), we could also decide to close the bug.

> If every person with commit access to Emacs dealt with 15 bugs,
> that would be all of them. ;)

The idea is to ask the bug-submitter's help.

I think it would also help to try and classify those old bugs into
different categories:
- bugs that are waiting for more info from the submitter.
- bugs to which we did reply and then things stalled (e.g. because we
  don't know how to fix them, lack of manpower, ...).
- bugs that have not seen any activity at all: not even a "hmm, thanks,
  we'll look into it".  These then get subdivided into:
  - author is a well-known contributor, so it's acceptable.
  - else, this is a serious lack of consideration, we should at least
    tell him "thank you for reporting this problem and sorry we don't
    have the manpower to handle it".
I think this classification can be made automatically/heuristically
by checking if the last message was from a developer.


        Stefan