Re: Tracking package submissions with Debbugs

[Alex Vong]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Alex Vong <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> I suppose it wouldn’t handle patch series very well though, would it?
>>>> Or people would have to send the “cover letter” of the series first, and
>>>> then send the rest to address@hidden once a number has been
>>>> assigned?
>>>
>>> Or could we have a bug per module?  Then the whole patch series could be
>>> sent to the bug id of the module.  But I guess this would make it harder
>>> to keep track of individual package submissions again, because bug would
>>> rarely ever be closed when there are lots of patches to the same module.
>>>
>> Yes, I think it will make it harder to keep track of individual
>> package. Is there a way to configure git-sendmail to do what we want?
>>
>> Here is a related idea. If we were to send all packaging bug reports to
>> a single package (e.g. guix-package), then it will make it impossible to
>> browse from a web browser. The situation is similar to the slowness of
>> our Packages page[0]. So instead of having a bug per module, should we
>> have a package per module (e.g. guix-package-emacs, guix-package-maths,
>> guix-package-shells ...)?
>
> I think that wouldn’t scale, and would also prevent us to have a global
> view of all the pending submissions (not to mention that debbugs.gnu.org
> is administered by non-Guix people and they’d quickly be annoyed ;-)).
>
> So, let’s ask for address@hidden (or address@hidden) to
> begin with?
>
I see. Right now, emacs has about 3766 non-archived bugs, and it takes
12 - 15 seconds to load the bug page in tor browser / firefox, which is
still acceptable. Guix now has about 3958 packages, so I will guess it
will take similar time to load? 

About scalibility, I also find that the split will make it difficult to
search for a particular package, since the web-based interface only
support for searching up to 2 packages at once. So yes, I think we
should ask for address@hidden to begin.

>>>> What’s unclear to me is how convenient Debbugs is for non-Emacs users:
>>>> Emacs has M-x debbugs-gnu, which is a significant UI improvement, but
>>>> how do non-Emacs users deal with Debbugs?
>>>
>>> Outside of Emacs I only ever used Debbugs in read-only fashion.  The web
>>> interface is not very pretty but it’s functional and looks better than
>>> the default mailman interface.
>>>
>> Yes, it is still email-based. The web interface is read-only, you can
>> search for bug reports in a package[1]. To reply to it, you send email
>> to <address@hidden>. For non-emacs users, this means
>> they have to use email client to communicate and web browser to search /
>> read bugs.
>
> Yeah well, better than the Mailman interface.
>
I forget to mention: This reminds me of the old joke: Emacs is an
operating system that needs a better editor :)

> Thanks,
> Ludo’.