Re: DVCSes, bug trackers, and GNUness

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Shouldn't we switch to Savannah and fix it?  Isn't that what we're
> supposed to do about bzr?  Why isn't there an executive decision to
> prefer the GNU package?

I'd rather not discuss the Bzr decision.  As for using a GNU bugtracker
instead of Debbugs, I don't have much of an opinion: Debbugs is far from
perfect, so from a technical point of view I'd be willing to use
something else, if it's better (the main weaknesses AFAICT of Debbugs
being its limited search&classification functionality, as well as its
fairly poor web interface).

Debbugs is Free (tho it seems to be GPLv2 only), so I'm perfectly happy
using it.  If a GNU package, such as Savane, were to provide a viable
replacement, I'd be happy to switch to it, tho the burden of moving over
would need to be justified by some additional benefit.

> Savannah, and boy would I like to have it fixed. I'm working on doing
> just that by finishing the Python rewrite of Savane, and if email
> support is what it takes to stop using debbugs, I would very much like
> some help doing that.

Actually, I think there are two issues that need to be addressed and
that tend to be bundled as "email support":
1- the ability to submit bug reports over email, to receive bug-reports
   via email, and to reply to bug-report via email.
2- the ability to manipulate the state of bug-reports (tag, close,
   merge, ...) offline.  In Debbugs this is done via email, and I guess
   some people would prefer if it stayed that way, but I think that many
   people would be happy to use another interface (e.g. something like
   `debbugs-gnu') for that.


        Stefan