How can I report bugs in gnulib? (was: Re: Running tests as a gnulib developer)

[Reuben Thomas]

On 10 January 2012 18:14, Reuben Thomas <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> It is good practice when asking for help (and getting it)
>> to volunteer the patch that would have saved you some trouble.
>> Since you've just hit a particular problem you are perhaps better
>> placed than anyone else to propose a fix.

You've hit the a particular problem I have here: sometimes when I'm
deep in the middle of something else I just want to report a bug and
move on, and not feel I'm a Bad Person if I don't provide a patch.
With most free software, one gets that choice: either you can patch a
bug yourself (and get the credit and warm fuzzies) or you can just
report a bug (and have no assurance that it will be fixed).

The care the gnulib maintainers give to maintaining patch quality is
laudable and understandable, but it does make the process of preparing
a patch peculiarly time-consuming and frustrating. When working on
gnulib, the "fun hacking" vibe quickly morphs into "arid deathmarch"
for me. I do appreciate that this is largely because gnulib takes care
of all the dull stuff so that I don't have to when I'm working on
other projects. But there's only so much jot-and-tittling I can take
at a time. In the present instance, I passed on preparing a patch when
I was already in the middle of preparing two others. I'd like to get
some work that really feels like actual work done today, not just some
gnulib fixes.

So, is there a way I can simply file a bug report without a guilty
conscience? Note that that can mean "a bug report for which I later
provide a match", just as likely as "a bug report that gets added to
an ever-increasing pile which just sits gathering dust".

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