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Re: RFC round 3: DEP-3: Patch Tagging Guidelines



Hi:

I think gregor makes a good point, and that there can be a reasonable
compromise between the two worlds of "hey, let's just use URLs in the
Bug: field" and "no, I'm too lazy, we should just use a nubmer and
refer to the Debian BTS"

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 8:58 PM, gregor herrmann<gregoa@debian.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:48 -0400, James Westby wrote:
>
>> Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>> > Josselin Mouette wanted to allow bug numbers instead of URLs in the Bug-*/Bug
>> > fields. Several people expressed their preference for a simple URL field.
>> > Sub-thread: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/06/msg00543.html
>> I don't like this suggestion at all. Copying and pasting a URL in is
>> generally convenient, and while many of us will have quick ways of going
>> from a bug number to the bug page, new contributors and those outside
>> the project won't, and so it will be harder for them to get the
>> information.
>> Yes, typing the bugs.debian.org part when you have the bug number is
>> tedious, but it's easy, and it's possibly a case of write-one read-many.
>
> I respectfully disagree on that issue.
>
> In my experience bugs in Debian (in whatever context but
> also/including current patches) are referred to by their number; the
> same is true IMO for upstream bugs in certain fields (e.g. CPAN RT).
>
> I agree that that's not completely obvious/intuitive for "newcomers"
> but consumers of the patch format (command line tools, web
> interfaces, ...) are free to expand them to URLs, and those
> interfaces are probably more used than the raw source packages by the
> people who are not intimate with the semantics of the used bug
> trackers.
>
> Maybe I'm too lazy but I'd rather use
>    Bug: #123456
>    Bug_CPAN: #12345

Maybe an idea is to have a format like:

Bug: #123456 (assumes Debian BTS)
Bug: BTS#123456 (same as above, but explicit)
Bug: RT#123456 (to point to the CPAN Request Tracker)
Bug: http://blahblah

So you can use any of the above formats, either the short forms where
you have: SYSTEM#NUMBER or the full URL.

Of course, that makes it more complex to handle parsing slightly, but
I think it's tolerable.

And given previous fields I think Bug-CPAN is more appropriate than
Bug_CPAN (underscores are not used in Control fields from what I can
tell, like with Vcs-Browser for example)

I think in general there are some common bug tracking systems and we
should honour those, to make it easier for developers to write
quickly, but in a way that is not ambiguous


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