Re: Offer to maintain GNU's Debbugs instance (and modernize it)

[Michael Albinus]

Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> writes:

Hi Ian,

> To be clear, here is my overall understanding of how to best help
> debbugs right now:
>
> The debbugs.gnu.org sysadmins are: FSF tech team, Karl Berry, Michael
> Albinus, Glenn Morris, Bob Proulx. We are in need of a new volunteer to
> help with mainly:

Unfortunate, Glenn and Noam are inactive now. Personally I keep an eye
on it, in order to let it running. But I don't work on the Debbugs
software (except there would be a critical bug).

> * OS upgrade every 2 years or so.
>
> * Reviewing, installing & testing debbugs changes from upstream and
>   other people.
>
> * Answering support email.

In theory yes. In practice, point 2 doesn't happen often.

> Right now, we have a backlog of:
>
> * Doing an OS upgrade
>
> * Getting the upstream debian's debbugs improvements from the last few
>   years added to our version & test and install that.
>
> I think best way to get started helping is:
>
> 1. Get the current GNU version of debbugs running on your own trisquel
> 11 machine (run a vm if needed). See
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26380#8 for various
> versions of the source code. Write down instructions, fix any issues. I
> recently got the upstream debbugs working on my own machine after a
> couple hours of reading and poking at it.

Hmm, it seems to be even easier. Bob and Noam have installed a second
machine, debbugs2p.gnu.org, exactly for that purpose. Back in 2018/2019,
IIRC. We could still use it. We need to

* Get a recent version og upstream Debbugs software from Debian in our
  own repo (based on Noam's work), and

* Upgrade debbugs2p to that version.

> A few notes: I see the public GNU debbugs source code doesn't have the
> main config options we use and that would be helpful, I redacted a
> password and put them here: http://debbugs.gnu.org/gnu-config-example
> . Note: our debbugs receives mail from addresses like bug-guix@gnu.org
> using classic email forwarding to submit@debbugs.gnu.org (classic email
> forwarding, means keep the to: etc unchanged). You can just configure
> the local mta or email client to do that for testing.
>
> 2. Make & test a rebased version of the GNU Debbugs code on top of the
> upstream Debbugs one on your own machine, continuing the work done by
> Michael Albinus described here
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26380#8 .

It wasn't me but Noam, Glenn and Bob who worked on that upgrade. As
said, I wasn't involved in that upgrade project. So I much appreciate
the courage of Felix and Maxim to take a stab!

> One of the existing sysadmins will work with you to apply that work to
> debbugs.gnu.org, and maybe add you as a sysadmin.
>
> Once those things are done, it would be a good time to make other
> improvements.

Best regards, Michael.