Re: [Patch] Remove gccbug from bugreport.texi

[Wolfgang Bangerth <bangerth at ices dot utexas dot edu>]

Joseph,
I don't think your answer solves anything. First:

> However, bugreport.texi should be gutted so that it only refers to the
> online bug reporting instructions _and to the copy of them included in the
> distribution_ (for those normally working offline).  This involves going
> through it working out exactly what duplicates the online documentation
> and what needs merging into it.  Much the same applies to the Fortran
> documentation which you noted previously.  I don't think discussion of
> particular bug reporting methods in the manual is an appropriate start.

I have no intentions to remove bugreport.texi, but you're just shutting
off any discussion on the present topic. How can we move forward if the
hurdle for a small patch is the removal of an entire file?


Second:

> There are large parts of the world where the normal (or only available)
> form of network access is dialup, charged by the minute, so WWW bug
> reporting is significantly more expensive for those users than composing a
> message with gccbug offline.

I think that's inappropriate, too. I was living with a 14k modem until 
last year. It was fast enough to sometimes read the newspaper. If I can 
think of a lean web page, then it's certainly the gnats submission form. 
Given that the typical attachment for a bug is the range of >100k, I 
seriously doubt that the overhead of http is significant there. After all, 
the attachment also has to be sent when using mail.

If we were to adopt this line of reasoning, we would certainly have to 
reject the move to bugzilla, since it has this big picture with the ant on 
its main page.


> Bug reports submitted through GNATSweb are often missing something as well
> - the version number, or the attachment (through the submit defective bug
> report / error comes back but for security the attachment needs to be made
> manually on the form again route?).

That's a no-argument too. If both are bad, that's no reason to keep both,
right? Though the gnats bug will be fixed when moving to bugzilla, the
problems with gccbug will remain.


I'd like to stress again that I don't want to kill gccbug at all. I'm just 
removing it from the list of recommended ways of submitting PRs. I'm fine 
with people using stone age tools, but if it creates problems for us we 
don't have to encourage it.

W.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wolfgang Bangerth              email:            bangerth@ices.utexas.edu
                               www: http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~bangerth/