zack's home page/ blog/ posts/ 2008/ 01/ bts followup/ discussion

Hi Zack,

you have a problem I face as well and you came up with a solution in your blog. However I'm unsure if bts is the right place for such a change, because when I read your blog entry I remembered an item on the BTS (#293714) where someone requested to add an option so that mails produced with bts could be editted in a MUA. This one was tagged as wontfix as Martin Zobel-Helas thinks that MUA-integration into bts is against the bts-design. So given that I think integrating your feature is against the bts-design as well. So probably bts it the wrong place to go. Eventually reportbug would be a better choice, but I don't know. What do you think?

-- Patrick Schoenfeld

your blog. However I'm unsure if bts is the right place for such a change, because when I read your blog entry I remembered an item on the BTS (#293714) where someone requested to add an option so that mails produced with bts could be editted in a MUA. This one was tagged as wontfix as Martin Zobel-Helas thinks that MUA-integration into bts is against the bts-design. So given that I think integrating your feature

Thanks for the pointer. But in fact I disagree, as yet another devsripts maintainer, with Zobel's point. I even think that adding an extra optional step to devscripts which enable to review the mail in the MUA is a nice and desirable extra future.

For this reason I've just followed up on the bug report you pointed me to, in order to discuss the issue with Zobel.

-- zack

New bts command: followup

I just used

mbug () {
  local tmpfile
  tmpfile=$(tempfile -p mbug)
  wget -qO $tmpfile http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?mboxstat=yes\;mboxmaint=yes\;mbox=yes\;bug=${1:?E: no bug
+number specified.}
+  local ret=$?
  if [ $ret -ne 0 ]
  then
echo "E: bug mailbox could not be retrieved."
rm -f $tmpfile
return $ret
  fi
  mutt -f $tmpfile
  rm -f $tmpfile
}

so far, but followup looks interesting.

-- martin f krafft

regarding your blog post http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/01/bts_followup/ (which is unfortunately not easily commentable), I have attached my "muttdebbug" script, which does basically the same as "bts followup", but with some more bells and whistles. For example, it is easy to follow up on multiple bugs, and to tag bugs.

Greetings

Marc Haber

http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/01/bts_followup/ (which is unfortunately not easily commentable),

Uhm, actually it just need either you to register or to have an openid, do you think it's too much? Maybe it is, unfortunately there is not yet a classical blog comment interface for ikiwiki ATM that I'm aware of.

I have attached my "muttdebbug" script, which does basically the same as "bts followup", but with some more bells and whistles. For example, it is easy to follow up on multiple bugs, and to tag bugs.

Thanks for your script. Well, the part with tagging I think it won't be a good fit for bts since it is already supported by other commands of bts. On the contrary, the possibility to reply to more than one bug is interesting, I'll try to add support for this also to bts followup.

Still, you seem to download the whole mailbox, which I something I would like to avoid with my implementation.

--zack

Uhm, actually it just need either you to register or to have an openid, do you think it's too much?

I think so, yes, but that's of course your decision.

I have attached my "muttdebbug" script, which does basically the same as "bts followup", but with some more bells and whistles. For example, it is easy to follow up on multiple bugs, and to tag bugs.

Thanks for your script. Well, the part with tagging I think it won't be a good fit for bts since it is already supported by other commands of bts.

Actually, it is one of the main reasons that I wrote it because it allows people to actually comment what they're doing. I sometimes feel irritated by people throwing an uncommented "bts tags foo" at my bugs because sometimes I do not know whether it is actually a typo, or a reason for doing things.

Still, you seem to download the whole mailbox, which I something I would like to avoid with my implementation.

I think downloading the whole mailbox is a feature since it allows you to directly reply to one message, which will put your new message in the right place if somebody else downloads the mailbox later.

Marc Haber

I think so, yes, but that's of course your decision.

Unfortunately it is not, it is a feature lacking in my blog engine, ... /me really needs to find time to implement me.

Actually, it is one of the main reasons that I wrote it because it allows people to actually comment what they're doing. I sometimes feel irritated by people throwing an uncommented "bts tags foo" at my bugs because sometimes I do not know whether it is actually a typo, or a reason for doing things.

You know that bts supports a "# comment syntax" precisely for that, don't you? Of course this is only part of the solution which have both technical but mainly social problems: - the comment is, due to the CLI interface, necessarily a one liner (but still it would be far better than nothing!) - people need to be encouraged to add such comments. Current technical choice which hinders this are: - the "tricky" syntax (# needs to bee escape in most shells) - the fact that the BTS bug log pages hide per defaults comments, you need to click on the message to see them

I think downloading the whole mailbox is a feature since it allows you to directly reply to one message, which will put your new message in the right place if somebody else downloads the mailbox later.

Then why aren't you just using "bts show --mbox BUGNO"?

-- zack

You know that bts supports a "# comment syntax" precisely for that, don't you?

Noone seems to use it.

  • the fact that the BTS bug log pages hide per defaults comments, you need to click on the message to see them

That's why my messages are usually only Bcc'ed control and addressed to bugno-quiet.

I think downloading the whole mailbox is a feature since it allows you to directly reply to one message, which will put your new message in the right place if somebody else downloads the mailbox later.

Then why aren't you just using "bts show --mbox BUGNO"?

No idea. Chances are that bts was not yet around (or I was not aware of it) when I wrote muttdebbug.

Marc Haber