Re: Bug statistics

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>
> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:59:11 +0200
> Cc: 
> 
> I guess, that there are quite a lot duplicate bug reports.  The problem
> with M-x report-emacs-bug is that a bug gets filed unconditionally.
> With web-based bugtrackers, after entering the bug summary the whole
> database is searched for similar reports and that list is presended to
> the user.  Then she can decide if it's really a new, unknown bug.  If
> not, she can simply append additional information to an existing bug.

This is also far from ideal.  Unless you have a lot of time on your
hands, going through the bugs and trying to figure out if they are the
same as yours is a nuisance.  This should be a job of some program
that runs periodically, or, failing that, of a human (whom we
obviously lack).

Gathering all the information needed for a good bug report is already
a non-trivial job (witness how many veteran Emacs contributors fail to
do that!).  We should not burden the bug submitters with any
additional costs.