How can end-users report GNOME bugs in one place?

bgoodr · 11-11-2009, 10:09 AM

A longer and more correct form of the question is "How can end-users report GNOME bugs and insure that Debian pulls in those bug fixes on their time-table so that end-users can avoid wasting time posting the bug into two separate places?"

For background, reference GNOME Nautilus bug 594302 comment 111 where it states:

Code:

--- Comment #111 from André Klapper <a9016009@gmx.de> 2009-11-11 11:43:11 UTC ---
Dear Debian users that reported this bug:
Please feel free to contact Debian as Debian ships the buggy Nautilus version
2.26.3 in Debian-testing instead of the Nautilus version 2.26.4 that includes
the fix for this issue.
The bugfix here was actually one single line of the code.

There's nothing more that GNOME can do here, as the fixed GNOME releases have
been available for six weeks now for the distributions to pick them up.

Well, if we end-users follow those directions as a mob, then we will end up mobbing Debian in the same fashion as we have inadvertently done to GNOME's bugzilla for a bug that was fixed a while ago (reference the number of duplicates reported for the bug above). Note that my question here is not "Hurry up and package up GNOME's latest bug fix".

As an end-user that has no visibility (and wants to continue to have no visibility) into what goes on behind the scenes, I have no technical ideas as to how to make that happen. Instead, I believe the end-users desire:

To only have to report a GNOME bug in one place, and
To continue to report it by way of an automated mechanism similar to the bugbuddy mechanism that was used for this current bug, and,
Not be asked to go pull up a web browser and cut and paste technical details into that browser (which is redundant with the above automated mechanism), which means the end-user has to hunt down the current Debian bug tracking URL, etc, etc, all of which wastes the end-users time, and most importantly, is error-prone, and,
Only for GNOME bugzilla, not for every package for all ad hoc bug tracking systems (I say this because it seems that bugs in the complex GNOME package will continue to occur and need to get fixed, and expecting GNOME to be perfect is both impractical and harmful).

Note that in this scenario, the end-user should accept to wait an unspecified amount of time for the fix to show up in their version of Debian by way of the APT packaging system. The above should not and will not address the separate issue of end-users needing to expedite the Debian packaging of one bug over another, since the intent is only to insure communication about those bugs be seamless for the end-user (which, if done correctly, could also result in a productivity benefit for both GNOME maintainers and Debian maintainers).

I am not holding my breath that the needs above would be met anytime soon, or ever, but this is just to allow the Debian and GNOME maintainers a chance to comment about it in a place separate from the bugzilla tracking system which lacks BBCode formatting.

Thanks,
bg

evo2 · 11-12-2009, 02:55 AM

1. If users understand the issues that you discuss in your post, then I think there is no problem.
2. Theses type of bugs should only really appear in testing and unstable
3. Users running testing or unstable should be expected to understand these types of issues. If they don't, they should be running stable.

Debian testing and unstable give users more power and freedom, but it comes at the cost of responisbiliry.

Just my 2 yen worth.

Evo2.

bgoodr · 11-12-2009, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2

1. If users understand the issues that you discuss in your post, then I think there is no problem.
2. Theses type of bugs should only really appear in testing and unstable
3. Users running testing or unstable should be expected to understand these types of issues. If they don't, they should be running stable.

Debian testing and unstable give users more power and freedom, but it comes at the cost of responisbiliry.

Just my 2 yen worth.

Evo2.

Sure, users using "testing" have a responsibility to report bugs, which I did and will continue to do, but that responsibility should not extend to having to waste time in shepherding a bug between GNOME and the Debian release it is in.

bg

evo2 · 11-12-2009, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bgoodr

Sure, users using "testing" have a responsibility to report bugs, which I did and will continue to do, but that responsibility should not extend to having to waste time in shepherding a bug between GNOME and the Debian release it is in.

Fair enough. Personally I think that the Gnome bug report dialog (and similar) should be purged from Debian: users should report bugs against the debian package. The reportbug command/package is quick and easy to use and there is reportby-ng for those who prefer a gui.

Cheers,

Evo2.

bgoodr · 11-13-2009, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2

Fair enough. Personally I think that the Gnome bug report dialog (and similar) should be purged from Debian: users should report bugs against the debian package. The reportbug command/package is quick and easy to use and there is reportby-ng for those who prefer a gui.

Cheers,

Evo2.

Yep. A couple of other thoughts on this are:

Allow a way for the GNOME developers to reassign certain GNOME bugzilla bugs over to Debian packaging. But that presumes that GNOME and Debian use the same bug tracking infrastructure, and it looks as if that they do not, so there would have to be some adapters or bridges built up to allow that to happen.
Perhaps the GNOME Bug Buddy crash detector package could be replaced with something else that would do the same thing, but redirect the bugs to Debian maintainers for that specific package, and then they could then forward it on to GNOME maintainers if they determine that is the best course of action.
I wonder if that email address that GNOME Bug Buddy could be used for redirecting the bug to Debian? The problem with that would be the user having to track down the right email address, which leaves too much room for error.

bg