John Lightsey wrote: > Following the advice given on Debian Mentors I've started going through the > various bug lists looking for reproducable, isolated and fixable bugs to help > out with. In the process I've become fairly comfortable with reportbug but > I've also come up with a few questions which don't seem to be addressed in > the documentation. > > (1) Reportbug doesn't seem to have the ability to add tags during a > follow-up. Is there a feature I'm overlooking that allows this or is it > normal to send a follow-up through reportbug and a seperate hand written > message to control@bugs.debian.org? > > Bugs #20715 and 49431 Yes, or to use the bts program to send the message to control. NB: I only use reportbug for reporting bugs, not browsing them though. > (2) When a bug is filed against the wrong package should I in submitting a > follow-up reassign the bug or should I simply point out that the problem lies > in another package and leave it to the package maintainer to reassign the > bug? > > Bugs #187686 and 137135 If you're sure that you're right it's ok to reassign it. Make sure you let the maintainer of the package it is assigned to know that you have, and why. Make sure you don't create extra work for anyone else. > (3) If a package maintainer has closed a bug due to a fix in the Unstable > version is it encouraged to fix, reopen and retag the bug (patch/stable) if > the problem persists in Woody? I can imagine that reopening bugs would piss > off quite a few maintainers, but on the flip side I use Stable on my servers > and primary workstation. A patch only applied to the Unstable version > doesn't really fix the problem for me. Not unless the bug is a security problem or something serious enough to have a chance of getting into stable. Almost all uploads of fixes of regular bugs to stable will be rejected. > (4) Related to the last question, what sort of bugs qualify for fixes in > Stable - Proposed Updates? Does the package maintainer make that decision? > I can understand that maintainers probably don't want the hassle of > backporting fixes from upstream, but as a user I don't really see how a fix I > will not have access to for a year or more is really a fix. The stable release manager makes the decision, using very strict criteria. Unless the bug is a security fix, makes the package completly unusable, destroys hardware, or reformats your disk, it probably won't get in to stable. You have access to bug fixes in the unstable and testing trees, and can upgrade to those packages via pinning, builds from source, or third party repositories. -- see shy jo
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