Re: On commit access, patch review, and remaining healthy

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Brian Cully <bjc@spork.org> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>     If you are using Emacs, does debbugs.el have
>>     shortcomings that make it a problem to review patches?

To be clear, the question was directed primarily at current committers.

> 1) It’d be nice if ‘M-x debbug-guix’ existed. I (briefly) looked at
> making such a command, thinking it’d be relatively straight-forward to
> just copy ‘debbugs-gnu’ and tweak some variables, but when it looked
> like it was going to take more than 10 minutes just to figure out how
> it was all put together I gave up as I can’t really dedicate time to
> it right now.

Try: C-u M-x debbugs-gnu.  From there you can choose ‘guix’,
‘guix-patches’, or anything else (info "(guix) Debbugs User
Interfaces").

> 2) IMHO, the documentation for debbugs is pretty poor. It mostly
> relies on GNUS documentation for things like mode help; and while this
> makes sense, GNUS is a big, complex package (which is why I use mu4e
> instead of it), and it really raises the barrier for understanding
> debbugs quite a lot.

I find the Debbugs User Guide, plus the docstrings and all, to be good
(info "(debbugs-ug) Top").

I use Gnus though so maybe there are issues I just don’t experience.

> 3) Even after reading all the documentation I could find, it doesn’t
> seem to work very well for an issue-tracker workflow. I still don’t
> know how to simply reply to a ticket. Let alone how to apply a patch
> to my tree (I did see documentation for how to do that to the Emacs
> source tree, but that’s not very useful — also, the key combinations
> feel very obtuse and hard for me to remember).
>
> So, right now, I just use it to browse, since I find it easier than
> mumi, but everything else happens with external tools. It’s very
> possible my n00b is showing right now and it’s easier to work with
> than it seems at first blush, but I’d say that means the documentation
> needs some dedicated, non-GNUS-oriented love. It would be very helpful
> if there were a HOWTO, like we used to do in the old days, with how to
> use it for simple tasks, and stick it in the info documentation and on
> the web.

Interesting.  Since I already used Gnus before, I didn’t have much to
learn when I started using debbugs.el.

I know some people here use debbugs.el with other email clients like
mu4e, so perhaps they can comment?  We could add guidance in the manual.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.