Hey guys! Sorry for breaking in but I personnaly would love to be more involved in Debian's BTS, if there was an easy way to report back (even an official Ubuntu tutorial for this) I would do so.
I usually need forwarding bugs to the source projects (such as GNOME) since I maintaing both translations and most of the GNOME Hebrew or RTL related bugs pass through me anyway. Just a personal point of view, thank you all for hearing me out. Kind regards, Yaron Shahrabani - Ubuntu Hebrew maintainer. On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Jonathan Lange <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Matt Zimmerman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Given there has been a lot of discussion around forwarding bugs upstream > via > > Launchpad, I thought folks here might be interested in this debian-devel > > thread: > > > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00309.html > > > > It's long and wandering, but there is a lot of valuable first-hand > > perspective in there from folks who have done a lot of bug forwarding and > > package maintenance. > > > > There is. Thanks for forwarding it on. > > > I wish I could spend the time to summarize it, but thought it couldn't > hurt > > to pass it on. > > > > Many of the problems here and much of the thinking are familiar to us: > * There are far, far too many bug reports to ever finish > * Forwarding bugs upstream is complex both technically and socially, > no blanket approach will ever work > * In particular, you need to think of what the communications will > look like after forwarding > > Some things that weren't related to forwarding that I found interesting: > * Debian folk really like their BTS > * Account management was a recurring theme > > As Matt says, there's a lot there worth reading. If you're interested > in the problem, take a look. > > Here are my highlights: > > """ > maintainers should forward bugs upstream instead of requiring (or strongly > encouraging) users to do so > """ > > """ > If a bug is not readily reproducible or isolatable, it may be necessary > to pass it over to an upstream maintainer who will know what further > questions to ask. But they need to send those questions to the user, > not to the Debian maintainer. In the kernel team, we often ask users to > report bugs upstream for that reason. > """ > > """ > Ditto on the X side. Having a low-power proxy between developers and > users is quite a bad idea (induces delays and higher load). > """ > > > Thoughtful rejection of "we should forward bugs upstream on behalf of > users": <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00318.html> > (extract below): > > """ > It is a huge and frustrating waste of my time. It is also frustrating for > upstream, who would rather just talk with the user directly and involve me > if they think there's a Debian-specific question. I don't understand why > some users want it to go this way, but many clearly do despite the fact > that > they get worse service. > > I'm going to be brutally honest and admit here that being a copy and paste > monkey between emails and web forms is something I really dislike doing. > It > is something that makes Debian the opposite of enjoyable, and I think I > let > those tasks sit longer than I should, and work on things instead where I > can > actually contribute (such as fixing Debian bugs). > """ > > Others point out that the Debian maintainer acts as an expert filter & > refiner > of information for the upstream, not just a "copy and paste monkey". > > > """ > I personally would love to see patches to the BTS to enable forwarding > these kinds of bug reports to upstreams more easily and integrate > everything tightly with the BTS. Unfortunately, I am perpetually short > of time to implement them myself, as excellent as I am certain they > would be. > """ > > """ > That would be a very nice feature for our BTS to have. BUT any such > feature > should only be enabled with respect to an upstream BTS after discussion > with > and approval from the relevant upstream. > > As we can see from this and previous discussions: how easy to make it to > file bugs, who can file them, how they get to be filed, and so on, are > things that people care about and have strong opinions about. Different > projects have different cultural and technical expectations. > > Anecdote: while I was employed by Canonical I had to dissuade some of my > colleagues from implementing and deploying, without consent from Debian, a > feature in Launchpad that would automatically file corresponding bug > reports > in the Debian BTS. I expressed the view that doing so would be considered > abuse by the Debian BTS admins and would probably result in some emergency > ad-hoc wholesale blocking of Launchpad's access to Debian infrastructure. > Not to mention an absolutely enormous flamewar. > > To all of us that would obviously have been a really bad idea. Let us be > careful not to do to our upstreams what we don't want our downstreams to > do > to us. (Ian Jackson) > """ <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00395.html> > > > """ > The bts-link system takes care of polling for upstream bug status updates > for > several common bug trackers > """ > > > """ > Upstream tend to request users to install latest and greatest versions, > often for source or using other unsafe methods. Not only for package in > question but also for explicit and implicit dependences. Non-technical > follow these broken advices and break their systems. And then complain > that Debian is problematic for them. > > I think that forwarding user upstream is acceptable only for deeply > technical users. But but not as a default policy. > """ > > """ > Not all upstreams are like that, but I think that brings to the front an > important point: there are vast differences in users, in upstreams, and in > maintainers. > """ > > Reflections on the danger of non-maintainer triagers: > <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00393.html> > > Distributed bug tracking: > <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00328.html> > > jml > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >
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