Re: should all bug reports be filed against /source/ packages?

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Wed, 2019-10-23 at 08:32:11 +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> the thread about naming (source) packages reminded me of an other thing:
> Debian's bug tracking system currently (mostly) tracks bugs against
> binary packages and (less often) against source packages.

> It gets confused if a source & binary package with the same name, but
> otherwise unrelated exist; or when the same binary is built from
> different sources on different architectures;

I think this is a bogus practice that dak or ftp-masters should
outright reject on NEW processing. The second case might have been
valid in the past, but I don't think it is anymore since we have
versioned provides. I consider these to be bogus because I don't
think we can properly tell the infra which would be which w/o some
kind of manual intervention.

I've personally filed bugs on packages that have used this kind of
cross-naming when I've noticed them, and will keep doing that if
they are not banned from the root.

> or when binary and source versions don't match (version tracking really
> should use source versions).

debbugs at least has the apparent support for source and binary
versions at least at filing time, where you can do:

  Package: binary
  Version: version-binary

or

  Source: source
  Source-Version: version-source

if that does not really do what it's supposed to do, or other parts
get confused, I'd say this is a bug in debbugs that should ideally
be fixed.

> In addition there are issues when binary packages get
> renamed (e.g. when libfoo1 gets dropped in favor of libfoo2).

This is indeed a valid point, and it would be nice to get support to
handle this in an easier way. Say a debbugs command to mass reassign,
or some way to designate the new package as a successor of the old
one, so that the infra could do the reassignment itself, or similar.

> I believe bugs should always be assigned to source packages as source
> packages are really the unit we use to keep track of packages.

In some contexts that might be true, but for bug tracking and triaging
just using the source package implies a massive loss of relevant data
and grouping. :/

> So I'm wondering if we should start just filing all bug reports against
> source packages?  Reportbug could probably be easily changed to use
> `Source: ...` instead of `Package: ...`; more places could follow later.

I actually find it slightly annoying when getting bug reports relevant
only to a binary package filed against the source package, as that's
something else I need to fix.

Personally I only ever file against source packages, when the bug is
relevant to the actual source package, say f.ex. the packaging bits or
the upstream build system, something in the actual source, say some
licensing issues, etc.

So this proposal looks like an annoying regression to me.

Thanks,
Guillem