Re: Review request for apt-listbugs template po file
Francesco Poli wrote:
>> I was assuming apt-listbugs was offering to
>> filter "the bugs you want to see" by status; but that would make the
>> default a very strange filter! No, it's offering to include these
>> status-flags in the output; in other words, they're the "Statuses (of
>> the bugs) that you want to see". Is that right?
>
> Actually all the following options are filters on what bugs the user
> wants to see listed: -s, -T, -S, -B.
>
> By default apt-listbugs will show only RC bugs (that is to say, bugs
> that have one of the following severities: critical, grave, serious).
> But the -s option can be used to request the display of bugs of all the
> severities (-s all) or of bugs of one of a specified comma-separated
> list of desired severities (for instance: -s normal,minor)
Yes, this is a filter I can easily understand the point of.
> By default apt-listbugs will show bugs regardless of their tags.
> With the -T option, the user may request that only bugs having
> all the specified tags are displayed. For instance, -T security,moreinfo
> will only show bugs that have both the "security" tag and the "moreinfo"
> tag.
Right, so this one's an ANDing filter!?
> By default apt-listbugs will show bugs regardless of their statuses.
> With the -S option, the user may request that only bugs having
> one of the specified statuses are displayed. For instance,
> -S done,forwarded will only show bugs that are fixed in some version
> or forwarded to upstream.
Okay, so the three vital facts that were being left unstated are
1: it works as a filter on the listed bugs;
2: it's an inclusive (ORed) rather than exclusive (ANDed) filter;
3: the "default"... no, hang on, I *still* don't understand.
If "forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed" is the default, used when
I haven't specified a different -S list, that means normally
apt-listbugs will only show bugs that fall into one of those status
categories. And if there's a critical bug that the maintainer
hasn't responded to in any way, it won't match any of them, so
apparently by default apt-listbugs won't tell me about it. But it
*will* tell me about all the ones that were marked as "done" back in
the nineties. Surely that can't be right?
Oh, but wait - the following line was:
| Note that 'pending' does not mean 'tagged pending', but 'still
| open, pending a fix'.
Ungh. What was wrong with the word "open"? Am I similarly
misunderstanding the subtleties of a bug labelled as "done"? And
what does "pending-fixed" mean?
But at least now I can finish that list:
3: the "default" is "forwarded OR done OR open OR something-else"
I don't understand it, but I can imagine it making sense.
> By default apt-listbugs will show bugs regardless of their bug number.
> With the -B option, the user may request bugs not belonging to the
> specified comma-separated list of bug numbers are not displayed.
> For instance, -B 123456,567890,135792 will only show those three
> bugs (or possibly only some of those three bugs, if the remaining
> ones do not satisfy the other conditions...).
Yes, this is only a "filter" in a rather degenerate sense, but it's
self-evident that it's inclusive.
> Please note the slight different behavior of the -T option (where the
> specified tags are put in AND) with respect to the other mentioned
> options (where the specified severities, statuses, or bug numbers are
> put in OR).
Yes, well. I hope you don't mind if I stop here for now - it's been
a hard slog making sense of this, and I'm not going to try rushing
off ahead until I know whether I'm on the right track at last.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
Reply to: