Re: interpretation of wontfix
* Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> [180328 07:51]:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 12:01:19PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 at 12:17:37 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > > I think "wontfix" is exactly the feature of the BTS that was invented to
> > > solve the problem I described. The bug is not closed and remains listed
> > > - so everybody is free to ignore that tag and close the bug.
> >
> > Is this how most people interpret wontfix?
>
> Honestly, I don't know.
>
> > I'd usually interpreted it as
> > an indication of policy rather than priority: "I acknowledge that this
> > is a bug, but it isn't going to change, even if you provide a patch".
>
> I see your point.
I also interpret wontfix as "patches will not be accepted; the current
behavior will stand."
> When I use the help tag I usually do this together with asking for help
> say on debian-mentors, upstream or elsewhere. I do not hope that some
> help just comes from simply setting the tag. I also look into bug
> reports that I've tagged help from time to time whether some help might
> have arrived which I could have missed for some reason.
I would also interpret the help tag as "yes, this should be fixed, but I
would appreciate some assistance with it."
It might be helpful to have a new tag (perhaps "ignored"?) that means
that the maintainer believes that the effort to fix this bug would not
provide enough benefit to the overall user base of the package to
warrant spending the time to fix, but if someone who did care provided a
clean, easy-to-review-and-apply patch, it would be applied as time
allows.
...Marvin
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