Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog) [LWN.net]

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 7, 2015 23:28 UTC (Thu) by raof (subscriber, #57409)
In reply to: Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog) by pabs
Parent article: Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

What I dislike about the BTS is its entirely arcane mechanism for making changes. Each and every time I need to change the status of a bug in some way I need to refer to the online doc, and I don't think I've *ever* got it completely correct, even rigourously consulting the documentation.

On the other hand, the Launchpad email interface offers pretty much the same features, but doesn't have the control@, bug-nnn@, bug-whatever-the-other-addresses-are@ split and usually ends up doing what I wanted. And for complex tasks there's a nice web UI.

I happen to think that requiring an account is a positive - if you're not invested enough in reporting the bug to make an account, it's probably better that you don't report the bug. We have no shortage of bug reports.

We should *additionally* have an entirely hands-off crash reporting mechanism - errors.ubuntu.com is pretty close to this, and I'm pretty sure Fedora has similar infrastructure now.

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 8, 2015 16:30 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> I happen to think that requiring an account is a positive - if you're not invested enough in reporting the bug to make an account, it's probably better that you don't report the bug. We have no shortage of bug reports.

Which then annoys the people who actually make heavy use of a lot of systems. I have, what, eight e-mail folders for software I am seriously enough interested in to want to track the dev list. That's a LOT of reading. Do I then need another 20, 30 logins to bug-tracking systems for software that I may use extensively but am not seriously interested in?

Yes I know there's a spam problem etc etc, but it would be nice to be able to send an anonymous bug report, and know that there's a decent chance some developer will at least triage it and maybe promote it to "real bug", or point you at the relevant help or somesuch.

I don't expect much response from a drive-by bug report, but I really don't like software that puts hoop after hoop in front of you when you are trying to report a problem ...

Cheers,
Wol

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 8, 2015 18:53 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

> Do I then need another 20, 30 logins to bug-tracking systems for software that I may use extensively but am not seriously interested in?

We need to develop one universal login that can be used to access everyone's bug trackers. (See: https://xkcd.com/927/)

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 9, 2015 16:50 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

> Do I then need another 20, 30 logins to bug-tracking systems for software that I may use extensively but am not seriously interested in?

For better or worse, sites like GitHub have alleviated that problem. I'm about 99% more likely to go report a found bug if the project it's in is on a site I don't have to do a register-email-login dance on.

(Honourable mention goes to the dnssec-validator project, which tried to allow anonymous bug reporting on their trac site. They had a captcha which didn't actually work. I couldn't be bothered reporting *that* bug.)

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 29, 2015 7:32 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

New bug reports are never spam in the Debian bug tracker, spammers never figured out how to put "Package: foo" at the top of the mail.

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 8, 2015 19:35 UTC (Fri) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

I happen to think that requiring an account is a positive - if you're not invested enough in reporting the bug to make an account, it's probably better that you don't report the bug. We have no shortage of bug reports.

I'd rather get the reports. I can use filtering and such to keep my initial time investment low if necessary. Lots of problems are very difficult to reproduce so will only be spotted and fixed if we can get reports from the widest possible population.

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 29, 2015 7:28 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I need to look up how to change bugs whenever I modify bugs on Launchpad, that is just because I don't use it very often though.

Git code hosting beta (launchpadblog)

Posted May 29, 2015 7:31 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Hands-off crash reporting is the wrong way to do it as automatic crash reports automatically have private data in them that shouldn't be uploaded anywhere.