RE: Bug#88623: Should not suggest manipulating others' bugs
I'd have to agree here. I'm not even a Debian developer (I keep considering
going through the NM process, but there aren't any packages I want to
maintain right now), and there are still things -I- can do.
For example, people often (far too often) will submit a bug and mis-spell
the package name. As long as someone like me is trolling the bugs lists, I
can fire off a quick email to control and reassign the bug to the right
package. No harm done, all I did was steal a bug from the nonexistent
package "foobark" and reassign it to "foobar", so that foobar's maintainer
has a better chance of seeing it and fixing it.
The X task force has also always advocated users and developers alike in
getting into the bug-hunting spirit by merging obvious duplicates and
tagging bugs that have obviously been fixed for eons.
In my opinion, the only "bad etiquette" when it comes to dealing with bugs
that aren't your own is to either reassign to other packages when you're not
sure who the bugs should belong to (bad idea... Starts flame wars), or to
close bugs you don't own.
In closing: Organizing bugs good. Helps people out. Screwing with stuff
you don't understand bad. Closing other people's bugs bad.
Just my two cents,
... Adam Conrad
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Colin Watson [mailto:cjw44@riva.ucam.org]On Behalf Of
> Colin Watson
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 12:03 PM
> To: Ben Harris; 88623@bugs.debian.org
> Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Bug#88623: Should not suggest manipulating others' bugs
>
>
> Ben Harris <bjh21@cam.ac.uk> wrote in bug #88623:
> >Package: developers-reference
> >Version: 2.8.4
> >Severity: normal
> >
> >I've been told by Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> that package
> >maintainers shouldn't manipulate bugs filed against packages other
> >than their own without the permission of those packages' maintainers.
> >This clearly conflicts with the Developer's Reference which
> states (in
> >section 10.2 of version 2.8.4:
>
> I don't think this is current practice at all; I've often
> done what the
> developer's reference suggests, particularly when a maintainer appears
> to be missing in action, and now and again a maintainer has come back
> and thanked me for it. Obviously people should exercise
> discretion, and
> malicious changes to other people's bugs are strongly
> deprecated, but in
> general I think anybody who wants to spend the effort cleaning up bits
> of our enormous, sprawling BTS should be encouraged to do so. Maybe if
> more people looked at the bug lists for large packages whose
> maintainers
> haven't worked on them for a while then the bug lists might get to the
> point where the maintainers could face the task of trying to
> get it down
> further.
>
> I've cc'd this to debian-devel for discussion, as I think discouraging
> this practice would be detrimental.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Colin Watson
> [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]
>
>
> --
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