Re: How does the Emacs bug tracker work?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:

>> Then there's the oodles of misguided feature requests like (at random):
>>
>> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6891
>>
>> which doesn't sound very useful, and is also incompatible with the
>> current return values, since (string-to-number "0x45" 16) today
>> returns 0, so it should be dismissed instead of letting it linger on.
>
> Most such bugs are already marked wishlist; unless the request is truly
> outlandish, letting them "linger on" is not a big deal, since they are
> easy to exclude in searches.

Right;

http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?exclude=severity%3Awishlist;package=emacs

will exclude the wishlist items from the list of whatever it's decided
to show here.  However, the search interface doesn't seem to offer any
way to list all the open bugs, since there are so many unclosed bugs
there, and it only allows searching amongst 400 reports at a time?

I think the wishlist item in question is pretty typical -- it's not
outlandish, but (in my opinion) the utility here is pretty minuscule.  

Adding (string-to-number "#B11101" 'guess) would be possible, but
... why?  Especially since it's a C-level function.

> Similarly, we have lots of bugs tagged unreproducible and/or wontfix.
> We haven't been closing these, but if that bothers people, we could
> institute a policy of closing such bugs if there is no traffic after,
> say, a year.  I don't care, personally.

Why not close immediately?  (Especially wontfix.)  Bugs can be reopened
if closed prematurely.

> As for the rest of the old bugs, many are "long tail" issues that are
> difficult and/or time-consuming to debug and fix.  Hopefully, we will be
> able to make a dent in this over the course of the pretest.

I hope so, too, but I think without a policy change in how bug triage is
done, it'll be rather demotivating.  Seeing the number of outstanding
bug reports shrink is a motivating factor in itself.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/