Re: [Patch] Remove gccbug from bugreport.texi

[Daniel Berlin <dberlin at dberlin dot org>]

On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 12:25  PM, Wolfgang Bangerth wrote:

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

> 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.

The number of bugs filed by email has been decreasing over time.

Dec 2002:44 out of 355 (12.39%)
Jan 2003:77 out of 424 (18.16%)
Feb 2003:34 out of 368 (9.23%)
Mar 2003:55 out of 408 (13.48%)
Apr 2003:23 out of 306 (7.51%)

The numbers are a bit misleading:
In particular, Wolfgang accounts for over 15% of the email reports in  
January.
Also, all but 6 bug reports (total) are from people who also submit  
reports by web.

snyder@fnal.gov is the only person i can find who has a significant  
number of reports, and  *seems* to prefer submitting reports by email:
 	82 X-Send-Pr-Version: 3.113
      1 X-Send-Pr-Version: gnatsweb-2.8.1 (1.28)
      9 X-Send-Pr-Version: gnatsweb-2.9.3 (1.1.1.1.2.31)


> 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.
It's an 8k gray scale jpeg. It takes roughly 4 seconds on a 14.4k modem.


> > 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.

Which is why i support processing incoming gccbug reports, but wouldn't  
cry if it went away.

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