Re: Getting good bug reports
Goswin von Brederlow writes ("Re: Getting good bug reports"):
> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> > The reason why there is a problem with an http submission interface is
> > that suddenly every idiot will think "oh I must write a cool ui for
> > this".
>
> But with the tunneling suggested below the cool UI would have to talk
> smtp as well as http to setup the connection. So actualy doing this via
> http would be even harder than with plain smtp. So your argument doesn't
> hold.
Oh I see. I'm not sure that implementing a complicated layered thing
like that. How would you do sessions, anyway, or would you present
the whole SMTP session in a single transaction?
I don't think we should be implementing a perverse protocol out of
fear of a sociopolitical problem unless we don't have another way of
addressing the sociopolitical problem.
> Note: I'm not proposing bugs.d.o (or anyone else) gets an http
> submission interface. Just an interface to talk to the smtpd via http.
It should have the reportbug version string in the protocol, as I
described earlier.
> > The "bts" command is less relevant because it is run on your
> > workstation rather than some kind of installation target.
>
> If my workstation is behing one of those stupid ISPs that don't allow
> smtp ...
My point is that you have to do a lot of setup to make your
workstation work like you want it to anyway. Having to provide "bts"
(and indeed perhaps other commands) with a way to send email is just
one of those.
It's much less of a problem than for reportbug, which you often want
to run on some kind of half-broken test setup.
> And the tunneling would keep your barrier intact.
I think it's ugly but that's not really an objection. If the BTS
admins are happy with it.
I still think we need the understanding that this will be used only
by programs which gain consensus here. We can probably get that
consensus for bts, provided bts doesn't grow a way to submit bugs.
Ian.
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