Retiring gccbug script?

[Craig Rodrigues]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2002 at 09:38:32AM +0000, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> If you want attachments in gccbug-generated PRs, if we move to Bugzilla
> then add an attachment facility to the new gccbug script, but make sure
> that the resulting gcc-bugs/gcc-prs messages, whatever bug submission
> mechanism is used, include the attachments as proper MIME parts,
> text/whatever if small or compressed otherwise.

This is a good idea.  Since gccbug is a Bourne shell script,
do you know if there is a portable way to detect if a file
is plain text or not?  Is the output of the "file" command portable?

> > - it does not give a clear idea how to add more information
> >   to a bug report after it has been filed
> 
> Reply to the acknowledgment message including gcc-gnats.  The Reply-To on 
> the messages is set correctly.  Adjust the text of the messages (and 
> gnats.html) if this isn't clear enough.

I understand how this works, and I use it.  However, for whatever
reason, not everyone out there understands or follows this.
Many people are forgetting to CC: gcc-gnats when they respond
to followups to PR's, so we are losing the audit trail.  This
may be more of a GNATS than gccbug issue though.

The Debian bug reporting system allows people to CC:
<bug id>@bugs.debian.org when following up a bug report:
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

I think that is easier to understand than the current
system that the GCC GNATS system uses.  I wonder
if we could use that facility in any way in the future?

> > - I'm seeing more gccbug submitted bug reports in GNATS that 
> >   are corrupted (pending category)
> 
> These are not gccbug-submitted - it doesn't let you submit with the
> pending category.  These are where people have sent other mail - not PR
> submissions or follow-ups - to gcc-gnats.  A human moderator for badly
> formatted gcc-gnats mail would be better than filing it as PRs in
> "pending".

Or how about bouncing the mail back to the sender, and telling
them to reformat the message and send it properly?
I'm already getting lots of error messages from the MAILER-DAEMON
about sending messages to gcc-prs@gcc.gnu.org.

> I don't consider web forms a good means of bug submission.  With gccbug

I disagree with your opinion here.  In my own company, we use an internal
web based issue tracking system.  As a customer, I have used web based
bug tracking systems from IBM, Cisco, and Red Hat.  I have also used
bugzilla in other Open Source projects such as Mozilla
and the ACE/TAO project.  I've found these facilities
to be easy enough to use, in terms of allowing me to submit the
necessary bug information.  

> one can use a text editor for editing bug report text rather than being
> constrained into using a web browser, and can submit bug reports offline.

How can you submit a bug report offline?
I don't find a web interface constraining if it is easy enough to use, 
gets the job done, and allows me to get on with my job.
Everyone has their opinions about these things, however, much
like the vi vs. emacs debates.
-- 
Craig Rodrigues        
http://www.gis.net/~craigr    
rodrigc@mediaone.net