debbugs?

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* Thomas Weber <thomas.weber.mail at gmail.com> [2008-11-29 08:38]:

> Personally, I don't think debbugs is the way to go for Octave, though. I
> proposed this originally, but there are a lot of things in debbugs that
> require learning. And especially with newcomers reporting bugs, that is
> not so easy.

In Debian, there are two handy commands "reportbug" and "bts" that easy the
handling of bugs in the Debian Bug Tracking System.  We could perhaps create
variants of the tools for the Octave BTS, such that user interaction will be
simplified.

At any rate, using debugs should not be too complicated. If I understand
correctly, the current Octave tracker should work like this:

* Creating a bug report:
  Send a email message to submit at emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com with a
  pseudo-header "Package: octave"

* Adding a comment to bug report:  
  Send a email message to <nnn>@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com, where <nnn> is
  the bug number.

* Manipulate bug status:
  Send an email message to control at emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com, using a rich
  set of commands [1].

Note that debbugs is not a patch tracker, although changesets can be
attached to the messages.  Note also that it lacks the concept of assigning
bugs to a certain developer, which is a common feature of patch trackers.
This could be replaced by the "owner" command sent to control at e.d.c [2].

[1] http://emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com/server-control  
[2] http://emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com/server-control#owner

-- 
Rafael