From: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Unable to close a bug in the tracker.
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:58:09 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87zl4glu72.fsf@red-bean.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <gz1vhtfooh.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> (Glenn Morris's message of "Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:41:34 -0500")
Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
>Karl Fogel wrote:
>> I never have to read the documentation for other bug trackers I use,
>> because it's obvious how to use them. If that doesn't seem like a major
>> win to you, I'm not sure what else to say... :-).
>
>I think it may be a cultural difference. Emacs bugs have always been
>reported and discussed by email. All the tracker really does is hook
>that up to a database so that things don't get forgotten about.
It is a cultural difference, sure. But I'm claiming one of these
cultures is now dominant, so expecting developers to learn this other
culture is unrealistic. Yes, *some* existing developers have learned
these ropes. But the bug tracker is off-putting to *most* developers,
and (I'd bet) to the vast majority of potential new developers.
>All the submitter has to do is use M-x report-emacs-bug. This
>initiates an email exchange with the developers. The submitter doesn't
>need to know any of the details about the tracker. Only the developers
>are really expected to close and tag things (though if others want to,
>that's fine). It does require a bit of an investment to figure out how
>it works.
I agree that M-x report-emacs-bug should work, but that's independent of
using an email interface (in fact, due to unreliable spam filtering,
Emacs has no way of confirming right now whether it worked or not).
>I think developers are expected to subscribe to bug-gnu-emacs and keep
>an eye out for bugs that are relevant to them.
An interface that essentially requires developers to subscribe to Yet
Another Mailing List is a lose.
>Browsing bugs on the web and clicking on them to add comments isn't
>really what it was designed for.
Can't disagree with that :-).
>I'm certainly not debbugs #1 fan, but now that we've finally been able
>to tweak it a bit, I'm fairly happy with it.
I'm sure a few people, for whom the investment is worthwhile, are happy
with it. I'm also (fairly) sure it's a productivity drain on the
majority of developers, since the majority of developers are not in a
position where that investment is worthwhile. Imagine if every free
software project you worked on had a similar tool-learning cost, and all
the tools were different (as debbugs is different from virtually every
other tracker). How scalable would that be?
If I had time, I'd do a survey of current Emacs package maintainers and
ask them if they monitor the bug tracker for bug reports about their
packages, by what method if so, and if they're happy with it. But I
don't, because I'm too busy continuing to rant, I guess.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-01-14 12:58 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 84+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-01-14 0:27 Unable to close a bug in the tracker Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 0:44 ` Miles Bader
2010-01-14 1:08 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 1:21 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 1:26 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 2:09 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-01-14 2:08 ` Óscar Fuentes
2010-01-14 10:06 ` Andreas Schwab
2010-01-14 1:02 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 1:08 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 1:14 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 1:16 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 1:21 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 1:59 ` Óscar Fuentes
2010-01-14 2:15 ` bug spam [was Re: Unable to close a bug in the tracker.] Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 4:45 ` bug spam Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 5:21 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 8:14 ` Yavor Doganov
2010-01-14 15:23 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 17:14 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 17:16 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 18:08 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 18:37 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-15 3:59 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-19 19:15 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-19 19:29 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-19 20:42 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-19 21:01 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 18:09 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 1:14 ` Unable to close a bug in the tracker Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 2:37 ` Miles Bader
2010-01-14 2:44 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 12:24 ` Xavier Maillard
2010-01-14 1:19 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 1:28 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 1:41 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 12:58 ` Karl Fogel [this message]
2010-01-14 15:35 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 15:47 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 16:24 ` Deniz Dogan
2010-01-14 18:08 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-15 2:11 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-01-15 2:31 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-15 6:19 ` Miles Bader
2010-01-14 4:50 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 6:36 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 8:54 ` bug threading [was Re: Unable to close a bug in the tracker] Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 15:24 ` bug threading Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 12:59 ` Unable to close a bug in the tracker Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 14:55 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 15:09 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 17:04 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 19:20 ` Xavier Maillard
2010-01-14 9:41 ` Deniz Dogan
2010-01-14 17:07 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-14 18:54 ` Deniz Dogan
2010-01-14 19:22 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-01-15 3:59 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-15 21:36 ` Richard Stallman
2010-01-16 4:02 ` Deniz Dogan
2010-01-16 8:10 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-01-16 11:02 ` Reiner Steib
2010-01-16 11:13 ` Óscar Fuentes
2010-01-18 3:06 ` Miles Bader
2010-01-18 4:13 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-01-18 5:29 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-01-19 0:06 ` Glenn Morris
2010-01-16 20:57 ` Xavier Maillard
2010-01-16 21:09 ` Richard Stallman
2010-01-14 13:09 ` Getting full bug database dump? Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 14:47 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 15:21 ` Michael Albinus
2010-01-14 15:31 ` Karl Fogel
2010-01-14 16:09 ` Michael Albinus
2010-01-14 16:20 ` Chong Yidong
2010-01-14 16:24 ` Michael Albinus
2010-01-14 16:37 ` Ted Zlatanov
2010-01-14 19:33 ` Emacs interface to debbugs (was: Getting full bug database dump?) Reiner Steib
2010-01-14 20:35 ` Emacs interface to debbugs Michael Albinus
2010-01-14 21:25 ` Ted Zlatanov
2010-01-14 18:00 ` Getting full bug database dump? Stefan Monnier
2010-01-14 19:56 ` Michael Albinus
2010-01-14 17:31 ` Dan Nicolaescu
2010-01-14 18:04 ` Karl Fogel
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