Re: Unable to close a bug in the tracker.

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>Karl, please look at it from the other side: not that long ago, all the
>bug handling was done on a mailing-list and nothing else.  That means
>bug-lossage-galore and the only "web-interface" was the email archive.
>
>The current web UI is clearly not as good as we'd like it to be, but
>compared to what it was before Debbugs, there's no question that
>it's improved.  Given the rate of evolution of Emacs development
>practice, I think we're doing fairly well.  There's hope that within
>a year or two, the web UI will be usable.

I completely understand the other side.  But Emacs is a project with a
very large, disparate group of developers, few of whom do it anything
close to full time.  So optimizing the bug tracker for the small
percentage of people who will become expert enough to be happy with it
seems like a mistake, unless the increase in the minority's efficiency
is *so* great as to outweigh the decrease in the majority's efficiency.
I strongly doubt that to be the case.

Again, I'm not opposed to having an email interface.  But a bug tracker
with *no reliable way to know that an operation has completed*?  That's
pretty basic.  If I wanted gambling I'd go to Vegas.

>Personally, I'd be even more interested in a good debbugs-mode.
>And that would be useful for all Emacs users, rather than just
>for developpers.

Emacs interfaces to bug trackers would be great.  That's not specific to
debbugs or to email-based interfaces, of course.

-Karl