launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Karl Fogel <karl.fogel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought I'd forward some interesting questions about our bug tracker's
email interface.  Background: I proposed on the Emacs Devel mailing list
that Emacs consider using Launchpad for bug tracking.  My original post
is here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-08/msg00204.html

Michael Albinus immediately followed up asking about APIs, and I
answered him (you can find that exchange in the thread if you want).
Then Stefan Monnier, one of the project leaders, followed up with some
very interesting questions:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-08/msg00241.html

We don't have good answers for some of his questions.  About ease of
use, for example: our tracker only accepts mails from addresses
registered with Launchpad.  The documentation also claims that the mails
have to be GPG-signed (https://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/EmailInterface),
though I'm not so sure about that -- I'm pretty sure I've manipulated
the bug tracker just fine without GGP-signing any mails.  

But the must-be-a-registered-email-address thing is a problem: it means
that regular Emacs users, who might never have heard of Launchpad
before, can't just send in a bug report by email.  Hmmm.

Then Glenn Morris also asked some questions:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-08/msg00287.html

Search for "Questions I would ask of a bug tracker:" in his mail; no
need for me to summarize it here, he's already quite concise.

He's right about setting up a test bed.  I'm going to ask on Emacs Devel
if they'd mind if we just import all the Emacs bugs (polite to ask
first, to make sure it's done in a way that doesn't cause user
confusion), since Launchpad can import debbugs pretty well already.

I'm not sending this to cause any particular action, yet; I just wanted
to put some food for thought out there.  Our bug tracker's email
interface is really useful, but is it ready to be the primary interface
for a free software project to interact with its users?  I'm not sure
the answer is "no", but these questions make me unsure the answer is
"yes" either...

-Karl