Re: Taking ownership of Debbugs (Was: controlling how long before archiving?)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com>
> Cc: karl@freefriends.org, help-debbugs@gnu.org, stefankangas@gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 05:08:16 -0800
> 
> On Thu, Jan 11 2024, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > What are the reasons for us to fork debbugs?
> 
> Right now, my plan is merely to migrate from Debian to GNU Guix, and
> then to upgrade to the latest version. [1] I will suggest we take each
> step first for the web interface and then for the email part. I hope
> that Debbugs will become more maintainable for FSF.
> 
> The Debbugs current version is fifteen years old and has 170 custom
> patches. [2]
> 
> My rationale for forking is that Debbugs does not meet the needs of the
> other big project that uses it, namely GNU Guix. There, we use a bolt-on
> "skin" called Mumi. [3]
> 
> Since both Emacs and GNU Guix use dialects of Lisp it makes sense to
> offer Mumi as a web interface. Users will find it much easier to
> contribute patches to the bug tracker itself.
> 
> At the same time, Mumi is deficient. For example, control messages are
> missing. I still use the old Debbugs web interface most of the
> time. Mumi's candy box look may also not appeal to everyone.
> 
> With a fork, I hope to offer valid HTML with a customizable look,
> written in GNU Guile. I also hope to offer diffs based on S-expressions
> [4] possibly incrementally for additional patch revisions.
> 
> For the Emacs user interface Debbugs.el, I hope to work with Michael
> Albinus to popularize it like Magit. Currently, few people use it.

Thanks.  I'll wait until you and Michael figure out the effect on
Emacs, and will comment then.

Do I understand correctly that the idea is to make the Emacs debbugs
UI look like what I see on https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ ?  If so, is
there a description somewhere of what features that will offer?  Going
to that site, all I see is pretty display of patches and also a
(future) feature of posting comments via the Web browser.  Is there
anything else, and if so, where can I read about it?