Re: Gitlab Migration

[Arthur Miller]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 26.08.2021 23:51, Arthur Miller wrote:
>
>>> The point is, someone who has never contributed before can more easily see 
>>> all
>>> bugs/PRs/discussions from the outside, and when they file a PR, see the 
>>> checks
>>> succeed or fail (with specific complaints and recommendations) without 
>>> having to
>>> involve a live person.
>> Hmm, some projects have thousands of issues, some remove solved issues. I am 
>> not
>> sure it is so easily discoverable. Also I see a lot of comments on gh 
>> advising
>> users to first search for the issue before posting, which makes me thing that
>> people are not so good to "look first" if issue is already solved.
>
> I didn't mean to say it's perfect, just more manageable.
>
> And, like you say, a lot of users are already "trained" to look for prior
> discussions, prior issues, etc.

I ment they are not :-). Seems like many people are "asking first" instead of
"searching first". That is how I intepret tips on some github projects, to
search first before they report an issue.

If I find something problematic i usually do a web search, and than if SX,
Reddit and Google return nothing useful, than I consider sending a mail to the
list. That is why there are very few bugs I have reported :).

>
> We see people on Emacs Help asking similar questions over and over.
>
>>> The ability to avoid bothering anyone directly (and risk a negative 
>>> reception)
>>> can help avoid some of the worries.
>> Maybe Emacs project should be better at informing users about Emacs bug
>> tracker:
>> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=emacs
>> and this one:
>> https://debbugs.gnu.org/
>> and debbugs package for browsing bugs directly from Emacs?
>
> They should be informed, yes, but our antiquated bug tracker is the main
> technical weak point of the project. Some of the previous messages which
> referred to difficulties in email-based workflow were actually about
> "email-based Debbugs workflow".

I understand. Now I don't want to be a devil's advocate here, but for me
M-x debbugs-gnu is a bit slow to load into Emacs, but once loaded I think it is
not much worse Githubs "issues" list on any project. I think it is preferable
since I can see all bugs back to version 23, instead of having to click through
pages on github. Maybe there is some better interface to github web service, I
haven't tried their cli tool, maybe I should, but I don't know.

When I open a bug repport in debbugs-gnu I see entire mailing list tree and I
also can click on any of messages and S-W to send a reply, regardless of how old
it is.

But yes, the difference is that on the web, any random user who is interested
about a project, can go to project page, and look through the list of
"issues". It is not so straightforward with Emacs indeed.