Re: Commit fest queue - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 
> 
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>> Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
>>
>>  
>>> well what about having the tracker being subscribed to the list and 
>>> let  it create a bug/patch/ticket id automatically for new mails - 
>>> that way  all stuff is automatically tracked ? - That way it can be 
>>> categorized in  the course of the following discussion but no history 
>>> gets lost.
>>>     
>>
>> This is (more or less) what the Tracman system proposed by Josh Drake
>> does -- and it's awful IMHO.  Amusingly, it's also more or less the same
>> thing that debbugs does, which IMHO is really good.
>>
>> The main difference (again IMHO) is that Tracman tries to stuff the info
>> in Trac comments, so it has to forcefully extract things from the email
>> with rather poor results; whereas debbugs uses the mbox itself as the
>> definite storage.
>>
>> Note that neither are really "subscribed" to the lists; rather they are
>> some sort of gatekeepers, which process the email *before* they get to
>> the list.  (Actually, AFAIK in debbugs there is no actual mail list --
>> it's all mainly about appropriate CC's.)
>>
>>   
> 
> The issue frankly is not tracker features. The issue is who is going to 
> maintain it, doing pruning and triage as necessary. No tracker looks 
> after itself.

heh very true ...

> 
> Everybody has their favorite tracker (editor, OS, SCM, ...) ... we can 
> have endless fun debating them backwards and forwards and never reach a 
> conclusion, just as we do fairly regularly.  The consensus last year 
> among a group of us who examined a number of tracker systems was, IIRC, 
> that Bugzilla had the best combination of features that people had 
> requested. (And it does have some email interaction). Stefan 
> Kaltenbrunner did some work on putting up a test instance and played 
> with integrating it with the Postgres bug system - I forget how far 
> exactly he got.

the setup is more or less complete and the integration part was with the 
community login system (same we have now for wiki.postgresql.org) by 
adding a postgresql authentication backend as well as some experimental 
modifications to the email_in.pl script to enable autocreation of bugs 
from email.
I did't push it further (or put it to a silent trial on say -bugs which 
is way less complex than -patches but might give us some ideas on the 
usability anyway) because I was fairly busy at the time and could not 
probably support it on a larger scale and it is far from clear that we 
actually want something like that.

> 
> My understanding BTW is that debbugs is very specifically tailored to 
> Debian needs, and is not suitable as a general purpose tracker system. 
> And no other OSS project that we could find uses it. So, before we even 
> look at it again I at least would want concrete proof that these things 
> have changed. (Perhaps Alvaro has forgotten those discussions ;-) )

yeah that is my impression as well.

> 
> (And yes, Trac sucks)

+1


Stefan