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

[Ian Kelling]

Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> writes:

> Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> My take on it
>> would have been more conservative: try to at least have a rebased
>> version of the GNU Debbugs instance on top of the upstream Debbugs one,
>> to benefit of its bug fixes and new features (?), before attempting to
>> rewrite it into something else.
>
> I agree. I expect the FSF tech team to do this work eventually if no one
> else does.

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:

* OS upgrade every 2 years or so.

* Reviewing, installing & testing debbugs changes from upstream and
  other people.

* Answering support email.

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.

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 .

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.


(note: I dropped sysadmin@gnu.org from cc. Emails there make
tickets. The initial one is useful to get our attention but generally
not after that).

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org