Re: using gitlab (or other) issue tracker instead of mailing list?

[Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2 Jan 2017 15:38:30 +0000
Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> For what it's worth, I do support having some list of bugs: we do from
> time to time run into bugs, but those that we don't patch immediately
> are only recorded in the list archives.
> 
> Bug trackers are generally open to the public and so serve some user
> support role as well.  However, as far as I know, the existing support
> channels work well, and only a "repository of known, acknowledged,
> unfixed bugs" functionality is missing.
> 
> As Eric points out, we could simply start using Etc/BUGS to fill that
> functionality.  Let's adopt the convention that every entry be tagged
> with an X-Seq number for ease of reference:

For what it's worth, I agree with all the above.

Just to repeat what Bart already says for form's sake: the crucial thing
missing for use of a more formal bug tracker is someone to operate it,
and anyone who reads the mailing list, can use a web interface and prod
the developers for info and has time to be diligent is suitable.  None
of the usual suspects has time to be diligent enough to make it more tha
a millstone around the neck.

There's a similar danger with the BUGS file, of course, but it's easily
found and fixed and if we edit it ourselves it doesn't have the key
danger that someone raises a bug that then just sits doing nothing for
ever.  (Of course, if no one fixes it is *does* sit around, but, to coin
a phrase, duh.)

pws