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

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

Sune Vuorela writes:
> On 2019-10-23, Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Have you ever maintained source packages where a source produced many
> different binaries?

I know that even maintainers are confused by Debian's BTS and sometimes
don't notice bugs not filed against the "main" package as you would have
to visit other pages to notice them.

And bugs reports get "lost" when packages get reorganized (renamed,
merged, split in different ways).  I've seen that happen quite often.

> I'm not sure the libreoffice maintainer, nor bug reporters, would
> appreciate this.

I as a bug reporter would certainly appreciate not having to look into
all packages anyway as the bug might already be reported against a
different binary.

> Back when all the kdepim packages (mail, nntp, rss, calendar, contacts,
> ...) were one source, I'm sure dealing with them would have been a
> nightmare.

We have usertags and other mechanisms that allow grouping bugs in
maintainer-defined ways.  This is also used by pseudo-packages where we
don't have "binaries" to group bug reports by.

For packages with too many bug reports, Debian's bug tracker doesn't
work already (requests time out when too many bugs exist).

Ansgar