Re: Consensus on closing old bugs
Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> writes:
> I am sometimes getting an email from the BTS that this "typo in the
> manpage" bug I reported 20 years ago has just been fixed in the "New
> maintainer" upload of a package.
> When working on orphaned packages or doing NMUs, it is also often useful
> for me to see the amount/age/contents of bugs in a package as an
> indication in what state it is.
Yes, I completely agree with this. When adopting an old, unloved package,
closing a bunch of old bugs (by fixing them, usually) is one of the most
satisfying and enjoyable parts of the work. Don't rob new maintainers of
that joy by gratuitously closing bugs unless you're analyzing them and
making a content-based decision!
Also, it's useful to have a bunch of open ancient bugs as an indicator
that the package probably could use more love (although this is a bit
overloaded with "the package gets lots of love but is so popular that
there are a ton of bugs of dubious quality that no one is looking at,"
which is less useful as an indicator).
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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