RE: bug tracker woes/misunderstanding

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Drew Adams writes:

 > Great.  Please add your explanation as doc, wherever the bug tracker is
 > documented (assuming this info is not already there).

Adding the explanation is a bad idea; it will encourage users to try
various "useful" changes as justified by their understanding of a
process accurately described only by its source code, and not promised
by the tracker maintainers.

 > I'm just trying to understand how to use it.

No, you're trying to go beyond "use".  Handling OT material in an
issue is *not* part of the job description of an issue tracker.
Issues are not the same as mailing list threads, and the appropriate
way for a user to present OT material is to find an appropriate new
channel, either a new issue or a different medium such as a mailing
list.

The feature of displaying a per-message subject could be useful (eg,
to announce availability of a patch or test case), but AFAICT it's
rarely used in debbugs (possibly because many other trackers don't
support it at all, they have a single subject for the whole issue).

 > Users will use `Reply' and `Reply All'.  Please document what changes to the
 > Subject line or other fields are no-no's.

All changes to header fields, except adding or removing addressees,
are forbidden to users of `Reply' and `Reply All'.

As Eli points out, the contents of admin/notes/bugtracker already say
what should be said.  Use the bug number address.  Everything else is
unsupported, although some effort is made to accomodate naive usage of
`Reply' (ie, simply typing a message body and sending, without mucking
with the headers).