Re: pretest, devel and bug lists

[Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>]

Stephen Berman writes:
 > On Tue, 27 May 2008 20:49:07 -0400 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
 > 
 > >> If things sent to emacs-pretest-bug are being fed into a bug tracker
 > >> and sent to bug-gnu-emacs, then I would say there is no need for
 > >> copies to _also_ be sent to emacs-devel.
 > >
 > > AFAIK messages sent to bug-gnu-emacs pass through the bug-tracker, but
 > > not messages sent to emacs-pretest-bug (which are redirected to
 > > emacs-devel instead).
 > 
 > Since (and because) this redirection was instituted I have usually sent
 > bug reports directly to emacs-devel, except where I thought it was more
 > helpful or convenient to use report-emacs-bug.
 > 
 > > I think this should be changed so that messages sent to
 > > emacs-pretest-bug do not go to emacs-devel any more but go to the
 > > bug-tracker instead.
 > 
 > If this is done, should *no* bug reports be sent any longer to
 > emacs-devel (and if they were, would that lower their chances of getting
 > attended to)?  It might be helpful for a maintainer to issue a policy
 > statement (preferably clearly recognizable as such) about this.

Bug reports for unreleased versions of Emacs should go to emacs-devel and those
for released versions to bug-gnu-emacs.  This happens automatically if you use
M-x report-emacs-bug (since emacs-pretest-bug is an alias for emacs-devel).

If all messages sent to bug-gnu-emacs pass through the bug-tracker I think it
will accumulate a lot of crud.  I would suggest bug reports go just to the
mailing list first then if they are good reports and not immediately fixable,
the OP is encouraged by the maintainer (or others) to post the report to the
tracker.  Of course, this process could be bypassed but it might increase the
signal to noise ratio. 

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob