On 12/11/24 8:47 AM, Charles Plessy wrote:
Le Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 09:18:06AM +0100, Gard Spreemann a écrit :
The BTS is core to Debian. It is e-mail based. While I personally think
e-mail-based workflows can be quite nice, the BTS' asynchronous nature
did cause me a lot of extra pointless work when I was an outsider
attempting to learn the ropes. Being not 100% confident with the system,
I way too often found myself waiting minutes – as much as 10 or 15 – for
replies to simple operations. Not only because being assigned a bug
number is actually necessary in order to move on with some processes
like initial packaging, but also because of the mental toll that comes
from not knowing that a past operation successfully completed, and
worrying that I'd have to return to it.
Thanks Gard for your comment. I would like to add that it is not just a
problem to newcomers. The time I can give to Debian is often 1 hour at
most per day, and waiting times being 25% of my time budget can
obviously ruin the day. And the lack of the confidence in the system
can not be solved entierly by knowledge, skill or experience, because
the core of the problem is that every year it is less guarateed that an
email is really being delivered after being sent.
I think a reportbug web based front end that authenticates with salsa
via oauth and sends emails without any email client needing to be
configured will already help.
Kind of like a mailing list web interface (hyperkitty in mailman) that
allows sending mails from a browser after authenticating.
Say reportbug.debian.org which has a login with salsa button (and create
a local user), then shows the report bug interface on ui, when
submitting it will send mail from the same server and any reply will be
forwarded to the email address in salsa account.
Additional bug interactions would be a plus, but having to figure out
the initial bug report template or configuring smtp smarthost is a pain
(it is not impossible but most other Free Software projects don't need
such a setup).
Additional interactions via email is much easier as it does not involve
manually creating a pseudo header (which don't work with html
formatting, the default for most clients) or configuring an mta on your
laptop.
If reportbug can open your already configure email client (like
thunderbird) that already helps a lot.
These extra hurdles are specific to our email based work flow and I
don't think it adds much value.
