[Python-Dev] New bugtracker project

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Andy" == Andy McKay <amckay@merlintechnologies.com> writes:

    >> Submitting a bug/patch can be as simple as sending a plain text
    >> message without any special markup.  Special name:value
    >> information can be provided if known (releases it's related to,
    >> etc)...

When I last sent an unformatted bug to Debian, I got an autoreply
saying "we have a 100GB bit bucket for this and it's about half full.
If you don't want to wait your turn, you can really speed things up
(and help the maintainer, too!) by formatting in the following way.
Information at the following URLs [more detailed instructions, package
search, the BTS URL] may be useful."

More polite than that, but you get the idea.  Worked for me.

    Andy> I altered ActiveState's bugzilla to do this, although I dont
    Andy> think its such a good idea. By submitting through the web
    Andy> interface you can force people to give you certain data for
    Andy> example os, python version etc. You either end up getting
    Andy> inconsistent data or forcing emails to be written in a
    Andy> certain way.

True.  I think the typical Debian package gets only a few entries a
week.  But I think a scoring mechanism that files the bug in a
low-priority slot and bounces instructions back to the reporter is a
good compromise.

One thing I don't like about the Debian BTS is that it presents all
unclosed bugs ever.  Maintainers should have that in their face, I
suppose, but from the user's point of view anything whose last entry
is a year or more old is irrelevant.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
 My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things.  I don't
have much nostalgia for Perl, so its faults I remember.  Scott Gilbert c.l.py