Re: RFC: bug reporting tool as standard [which one, if any?]
On Jan 29, Michael Piefel wrote:
> Am 27.01.01 um 01:31:25 schrieb James Troup:
> > There is, IMO, a need for one of the bug reporting tools in Debian to
> > be at standard priority;
> [...]
> > Now personally, I'm in favour of promoting 'reportbug' to standard; it
> > is (again) IMO a much better tool than 'bug'.
>
> I agree fully in that a) a bug reporting utility should have priority
> standard and b) it should be reportbug - I haven't used bug for a long
> time now; the querybts script alone make it worthwhile.
>
> > The only problem is, it
> > involves promoting python-base to standard. I don't see this as a
> > problem, but I'm sure some will and to be fair, I am biased.
>
> I would expect python on any reasonable Unix-like system these days.
> Personally I'd even say `What the F*!<+ is going on, where is python' if
> I didn't find it, so I'd even say it's important. But perhaps I do not
> yet qualify as an experienced Unix person ;-)
I believe python-newt and whiptail would also have to be promoted to
standard in this situation, as they are dependencies of reportbug as
well. The whiptail dependency could be removed if it matters to
anyone (I'd just have to recode whatever whiptail is being used for to
use python-newt).
I'd say reportbug is more useful than bug in the general case, but on
a stripped down system bug is less likely to break and it takes up
less space. OTOH reportbug can send reports without a working MTA if
you need to. bug is more likely to work on a broken system. Lastly,
bug's maintainer seems to make fewer thinkos than I do :)
I don't know how this may impact the decision. I think reportbug is,
on balance, the better choice, but bug does have some benefits in
certain situatons.
Chris
--
Chris Lawrence <cnlawren@olemiss.edu> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/
Computer Systems Manager (Physics & Astronomy, 125 Lewis, 662-915-5765)
Instructor, POL 101 (Political Science, 208 Deupree, 662-915-5949)
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