Hi: I think gregor makes a good point, and that there can be a reasonable compromise between the two worlds of "hey, let's just use URLs in the Bug: field" and "no, I'm too lazy, we should just use a nubmer and refer to the Debian BTS"
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 8:58 PM, gregor herrmann<gre...@debian.org> wrote: > On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:48 -0400, James Westby wrote: > >> Raphael Hertzog wrote: >> > Josselin Mouette wanted to allow bug numbers instead of URLs in the >> > Bug-*/Bug >> > fields. Several people expressed their preference for a simple URL field. >> > Sub-thread: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/06/msg00543.html >> I don't like this suggestion at all. Copying and pasting a URL in is >> generally convenient, and while many of us will have quick ways of going >> from a bug number to the bug page, new contributors and those outside >> the project won't, and so it will be harder for them to get the >> information. >> Yes, typing the bugs.debian.org part when you have the bug number is >> tedious, but it's easy, and it's possibly a case of write-one read-many. > > I respectfully disagree on that issue. > > In my experience bugs in Debian (in whatever context but > also/including current patches) are referred to by their number; the > same is true IMO for upstream bugs in certain fields (e.g. CPAN RT). > > I agree that that's not completely obvious/intuitive for "newcomers" > but consumers of the patch format (command line tools, web > interfaces, ...) are free to expand them to URLs, and those > interfaces are probably more used than the raw source packages by the > people who are not intimate with the semantics of the used bug > trackers. > > Maybe I'm too lazy but I'd rather use > Bug: #123456 > Bug_CPAN: #12345 Maybe an idea is to have a format like: Bug: #123456 (assumes Debian BTS) Bug: BTS#123456 (same as above, but explicit) Bug: RT#123456 (to point to the CPAN Request Tracker) Bug: http://blahblah So you can use any of the above formats, either the short forms where you have: SYSTEM#NUMBER or the full URL. Of course, that makes it more complex to handle parsing slightly, but I think it's tolerable. And given previous fields I think Bug-CPAN is more appropriate than Bug_CPAN (underscores are not used in Control fields from what I can tell, like with Vcs-Browser for example) I think in general there are some common bug tracking systems and we should honour those, to make it easier for developers to write quickly, but in a way that is not ambiguous -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
