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Re: Bug#224742: Related to this issue...



On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 05:33:56AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 09:59:08PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Are you being deliberately obtuse?  It limits the effectiveness of the
> > package's BTS page as a tool for the maintainer, by requiring it to
> > include irrelevant (from the maintainer's POV) bugs that do not
> > represent outstanding issues (again from the maintainer's POV).  This
> > constitutes an ultimatum to the maintainer: acquiesce to the submitter's
> > request, or put up with this degradation of the BTS's utility to you.

> I think it would be helpful if there were some more guidance given to
> developers as to when it's appropriate to close a bug without resolving
> it (and when it isn't actually resolved), and when it's appropriate to
> simply tag it won't fix.  Consider the definition of the "wontfix" tag.

> wontfix
>     This bug won't be fixed. Possibly because this is a choice between
>     two arbitrary ways of doing things and the maintainer and submitter
>     prefer different ways of doing things, possibly because changing the
>     behaviour will cause other, worse, problems for others, or possibly
>     for other reasons.

> The *only* thing this communicates unambiguously is "this bug won't be
> fixed".  The rest is very vague, and suggestive of nothing but absolute
> maintainer discretion for applying the tag.

> Given this, why *wasn't* tagging the bug wontfix the correct course of
> action?  Please explain this using the existing BTS documentation,
> keeping in mind that most of the users of our BTS do not have the time
> to research the archives of the debian-devel list for explanations of
> the disposition of issues reported in our bug tracking system.  They
> will likely expect that the on-line documentation is sufficient.

I would say that tagging this bug wontfix would be *a* correct course of
action, but there's no reason to think that it must be *the* correct
course of action.  Particularly bugs that are moved to a resolved state
soon after being opened will tend to not have a fully accurate
complement of tags, because that kind of housecleaning is of relatively
low priority.

And in cases where a wishlist bug is being considered resolved because
the maintainer refuses to implement the request, closing it seems
perfectly appropriate, with or without the wontfix tag.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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