Re: Choice of bug tracker

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi!

On 01/09/2023 10:15, Visuwesh wrote:
> [வெள்ளி செப்டம்பர் 01, 2023] Dmitry Gutov wrote:
>
> > [...]
> > The "minimum blood" would be mumi because from what it seems like it
> > retains all the email interactions and adds some moderately better
> > looks when viewed on the web on top of that. As well as faster search.
> >
> > But since it has the least "familiarity" factor among all of the
> > discussed solutions (and features, of course, and usability testing,
> > and etc...), the ability to attract more and more diverse users and
> > developers though modern tooling would correspondingly be lower.
> >
> > There is a sweet spot somewhere, but I don't have any scientific
> > argument for its position. Though if I try to imagine myself 10-15
> > years younger (rather difficult), the grading would most likely be
> > Github > Gitlab >> Bugzilla > mumi >> Debbugs. Add a pound of salt, of
> > course.
>
> You don't have to imagine yourself younger because I was eighteen or
> nineteen when I first posted a bug report to debbugs.  ;-) Not sure if
> this is your target audience though.

You are part of my target audience, of course. Hopefully.

> I did not have problems with sending the mail to the right address but
> knowing whether my mail reached the mailing list/debbugs was an issue
> since I could not see it pop up in the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list
> archive.  Much later I learnt that there is a manual approval process
> for fresh email addresses and that's why my acknowledgement mail was
> sent some 10 hours later (I went to sleep after submitting said bug
> report).  If there was a message along the lines of, “Your message has
> been received and will be forwarded to the Emacs developers once your
> email address has been manually approved to check whether your mail is
> spam or not” I think the first experience would have been smoother.
>
> As for submitting patches, I much much much much prefer the Emacs way™.
> It is so much better than forking the repo, creating a new branch,
> fighting with Git to merge/rebase and push properly without --force (I
> still don't know how to do the latter FWIW). And don't get me started on
> amendments after creating the PR...  For Emacs, I can develop the patch
> however I want and simply attach it to a mail---I cannot emphasise how
> much simpler and effortless this feels.  It is a good thing that Emacs
> actually prefers patches as assignment over `git send-email'---nothing
> is more of a pain than setting up an email client especially in a
> CLI/TUI setting.  When you have only used the GMail/Yahoo web client for
> email, all the terminologies that the man page and the tutorials throw
> at you simply flies over your head and you give up.  Now, the most
> common mail provider Gmail has made it a huge PITA to use a custom email
> client as well...
>
> So let me reiterate: I find it so comforting that Emacs accepts patches
> (1) via email, and (2) as attachments.

I'm glad that you like it here, and we should say that the ability to 
submit patch via an attachment shouldn't ever go away. I even post 
patches on Github inline (via markdown blocks) sometimes, puzzling 
occasional passers-by. So the number of options how to submit and 
discuss a patch shouldn't go down in any case, only up.

Note, however, that knowing how to work with Git and understanding its 
repository model (and knowing to to do merges/rebases/etc) is going to 
be very useful for your career, at least if you're a programmer or a 
data scientist.

> > There should also be SourceHut on this scale, but I don't know where
> > to put it.
>
> Cannot comment on how everyone else uses Sourcehut but my experience was
> slightly better than Debbugs because I got instant feedback from the
> mailing list archive and Philip accepts patches as attachments.  ;-)
> Generally, I don't find their web UI all that useful since they drop the
> entire message after the attachment.  I am not sure if there are plans
> to fix it since Sourcehut people prefer `git send-email' AFAIK.

Yes, they do have a weak spot in the web UI department. But basically 
anything is better than Debbugs, IMO ;-(