Re: Thoughts about the bug tracking system
On Sat, Jul 21, 2007 at 12:52:43AM +0200, Carl Fürstenberg wrote:
> When I'm locking at the BTS, (...) Not that it isn't effective, as
> when you have learned the whole system, you can query it pretty
> fast, but the threshold is pretty steep.
> (...) make it a bit more user friendly, but perhaps it's time to do
> something?
> The major problem with the current system, is that it requires that
> the reporter has access to a mail server, if they want to use the
> more easier variant by using reportbug script.
No, not really.
> their other alternative is to send an email from their webmail (I
> assume that they don't have access to an smtp server, and are
> prohibited to use one by them self by port 25 blocking) using a
> complicated syntax to be able to send "correct" reports.
If they have such a restricted Internet connection that they don't
have access to _any_ SMTP server, in last resort they can use the "-o"
option of reportbug to save it in a file and then paste it in their
webmail or any other MUA they may be using on any OS.
But frankly, ISPs that don't give access to at least their own relay
SMTP server, err... do they get any customer? Also note that AFAIK, on
installing Debian, exim-config will have asked them for their
smarthost, so actually usually (smarthost available) "reportbug" will
work out of the box.
> Perhaps I'm out on deep water here, but just wanted to give a
> thought. perhaps a web-based solution (with backward compabillity
> to current system) would be the most optimal solution?
I wouldn't oppose adding a web-based interface, as long as I can
ignore it, that is I can still use email for everything, and users are
kindly asked to give the same information than in reportbug (including
package-specific information currently asked or collected by scripts
in /usr/share/bug). Hmm... Now that I think of it, a web submission
interface cannot run a script of its choosing on the user's machine,
so there is at least one way it will be less user-friendly and
beginner-friendly: users will have to do (some of) the work that is
now done in /usr/share/bug by hand...
--
Lionel
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