schrieb Pedro Larroy am 2011-05-22 22:44: > Hi > > I think expecting having a working smtp on laptops, workstations, etc, > is unreasonable these days. > I suggest that we can make an HTTP based bug reporting method.
>From my experience as a occasional bug reporter, some thoughts that came to my mind: It's easier to get the mail setup wrong than to get it right. The current procedure assumes you have a working mail configuration at the reporting machine. That assumption is too strong. I need to authenticate to my mail server, and from time to time I'm in a different network that needs a changed configuration that I have to get right before using reportbug. reportbug should default to the worst case, that is: "I do not have a clue how the message will get sent to BTS, just Do The Right Thing(tm)". If someone knows that his/her mail config is working it should be an opt-in to use that. Sysamins or DD/DMs will likely know what to do, others should not need to care. Compare: > Will reportbug often have direct Internet access? (You should answer yes to > this question unless you know what you are doing and plan to check whether > duplicate reports have been filed via some other channel.) [Y|n|q|?]? and > Do you have a "mail transport agent" (MTA) like Exim, Postfix or SSMTP > configured on this computer to send mail to the Internet? [Y|n|q|?]? This should default to No. bug filed ;-) If sending a report fails, the message is saved to /tmp, and no advice is given how to send the message by other means. I'm not afraid of sendmail-ish programs, but I guess most of the non-developer users even don't know what it is, or what to do with the message draft. I understand Pedro's suggestion to implement an additional transport from bugreport to BTS. I do not see a big difference to the mail transport system. What is the advantage of having a mail-only BTS reporting mechanism? One thing would be to have a quite reliably working mail adress of the reporter. There is no difference to a HTTP base reporting system. One can easily get the mail config wrong, intentionally or by accident. In fact, reportbug asks you for your name and mail address. If you really want to be shure you need a three way handshake to verify the mail adress, either way. One thing I can think of is spam. How is spam handled with mail currently? What would be the difference to HTTP? Finally, BTS has a web frontend to read bug report, which I assume is the preferred way of access. Why prohibit this way of transport for the other direction? It does not need to be a web frontend for reporting or replacing reportbug as preferred way to report bugs, just HTTP transport. No one would think if reportbug to rely on mail transport for getting the bug list... Regards Patrick -- Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two Patrick Strasser <patrick dot strasser at student dot tugraz dot at> Student of Telemati_cs_, Techn. University Graz, Austria -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ire3if$54t$1...@dough.gmane.org
