From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Unable to close a bug in the tracker. Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:09:41 +0900 Message-ID: <87ska91lp6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <87iqb5o7ie.fsf@red-bean.com> <87pr5d5xco.fsf@catnip.gol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1263434501 12547 80.91.229.12 (14 Jan 2010 02:01:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:01:41 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Karl Fogel , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Miles Bader Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jan 14 03:01:34 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NVF1h-0001v4-IS for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:01:33 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:47908 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NVF1i-0004vX-5s for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:01:34 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NVF1Z-0004ok-Hw for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:01:25 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NVF1U-0004gn-9m for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:01:24 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=60247 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NVF1U-0004gY-20 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:01:20 -0500 Original-Received: from mtps01.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.223]:48837) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NVF1L-00036z-Uc; Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:01:12 -0500 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mtps01.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01AEA1535A8; Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:01:07 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 9D0491A2C00; Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:09:41 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <87pr5d5xco.fsf@catnip.gol.com> X-Mailer: VM 8.0.12-devo-585 under 21.5 (beta29) "garbanzo" 1444e28f1a3d XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:119961 Archived-At: Miles Bader writes: > Karl Fogel writes: > > For the love of Cthulhu, why are we using this monstrosity when there > > are so many other good trackers out there? > > Hm, is that really true? It seems more like there are so many other > _bad_ trackers out there. Let's not focus on "good vs. bad", let's focus on "debbugs vs. something better". > The ones that do email well, screw up the web interface (or don't have > one). The ones that do the web well screw up the email interface (or > don't have one). Some screw both up. Blah blah... In that case, my advice is to choose one that does the web interface well, and invest in some Elisp to manipulate it without touching the mouse to approximate an email-based workflow. Specifically, I chose Roundup for our bug tracker because it offered a fighting chance of getting both the web interface and the email interface tolerable. Result: The email interface accepts mail, and produces notifications to those on the nosy list, but nobody uses it for control, and really no improvements have been installed to the email interface in over 18 months because nobody needs them. There have been over 25 bugs against the web interface closed, and there are still about 50 open. Users care about the web interface. That's what Karl said, of course, but maybe an opinion from the viewpoint of a tracker maintainer would be of interest. My opinions of the trackers I've reviewed. Note that (except for Roundup, which I use daily) these comments are 18-24 months old. Most of these products are quite mature, though. Roundup has been sufficient for our needs. I've had complaints that it is "not Bugzilla", but nobody has gone to the extent of suggesting that we should change, or refuses to use it. Python has a much improved version you could grab. It has an excellent facility for generating and saving queries so you can generate the reports you need. The LaunchPad tracker was not available when I set up our tracker, so I never reviewed it carefully. As a user, it is the least usable of the major tracker products I've used (SourceForge, Bugzilla, RT, and Trac). There are lots of annoying project-related hoops to jump through to get to the point where you can actually do something with your bug report, and the documentation has that peculiar Canonical odor of James Joyce writing to an audience he expects to consist entirely of total n00bs. RT was clunky and (for my needs) clearly dominated by Roundup. Some people love it, though. Trac is pretty, but I don't know how good it is at accepting email for comments, or even if it has an email control interface. It also has an obnoxious query interface. Bugzilla: IMHO hard to go wrong by choosing Bugzilla, but I don't do Perl. There have been several Bugzilla variants with excellent email support, but none were published at that time. (Novell had one, for example.) SourceForge: not bad, if you can handle the various BS that SourceForge bureaucracy imposes. IIRC, it did handle email fairly well according to its docs, but I never tried it.