Buglist philosophy, (was bug 4164: ferret extended description...)
Susan G. Kleinmann wrote:
> So, except where the ratio of
> triviality-of-bug / responsiveness-of-maintainer
> is near 0, or (better) where the reporter realizes the maintainer
> has his own motivations for fixing the bug right away, I agree with Ian that
> the right thing to do is to log the bug. I believe the bug tracking system
> may be the single most important aspect of the Debian system.
As a maintainer whose responsiveness is probably less than ideal[1],
I must say I rather like having the bug tracking system, and I
would just as soon have people report stuff there. It saves me from
having to keep a separate list of "private" bugs, and while it may
not be a "pole of shame", if the list gets long, it tends to inspire
some effort to reduce it to something a little less personally
embarrasing :-).
One enhancement I would like to see is the ability to access the
buglist by package. No, not sorted by package, but a single page
of the outstanding bugs for a given package, so that I can have a
link to "http://www.debian.org/bugs/bypackage/nvi.html"; or some
such. Or maybe a form, so that somebody can enter a package name
and get the appropriate list. I think this would make it much more
likely that people would look to see if a bug has been reported
before submitting a new one, and would make it easier for maintainers.
(I have no idea how hard this would be; I'm just throwing the idea
out there...)
Steve
[1] I enjoy contributing in a small way to a community (both Debian
and the free software community in general) that has provided a
lot of benefit for me over the years, but the reality is that Debian
is a spare time thing for me, and I haven't had much spare time
this year.
--
The Mole - I think, therefore I scream
"Calling all units! Leading monster
stampede through the bottomlands to lower
forty!... Set up ambush on flanks!... Also,
do not shoot me!... Repeat!... Do not shoot
me!!!"
[FLAMING CARROT vs the Giant Japanese Monsters!]
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