[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: Bugzilla: make it usable now!

[Moritz Muehlenhoff]

In gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel, you wrote:
>> You could hack the python-based reportbug package, which is very
>> convenient, to suit mplayer's needs.
>
> That's one of the things that I definitely thought about. Problem is
> that I know nada about Python to begin with, and I'm not eager to learn
> yet another script language because my time's limited enough as it is
> now. But such a reportbug tool would be VERY handy.

There wouldn't need to be that much to be changed, if you stick to the
standard Debian resolutions and bug severities. One problem of debbugs
is that doesn't handle the stages of a bug fix very well, the general
resolutions and just open, resolved, closed and forward-to-upstream.
The latter one is obviously only useful for distributions, whole it's
normally very useful to have intermediate stages like "assigned" or
verification stages for bugfixes. This could be handled with tags,
though. The various components of mplayer could be differentiated
though packages.

> Anyway, I still think that the complete lack of a web based input tool
> is a serious drawback.

I guess it's not a drawback, but instead a good thing. The quality of
Debian bug reports is significantly better than average bugreports
found on mailing lists or atrocities like web forums.

>> There's a pretty good mail interface to Bugzilla from Mandrake:
> ...
>
> That'd be cool. Could you please try to find that URL again? Thanks.

I can't copy the URL right now: Search groups.google.com for
"bugzilla mail interface", it's the sixth search result with the
subject "MandrakeSoft bugzilla version details". This posting
describes all details. I setup this once for our Bugzilla version
at work, it might not work with 2.18 Bugzillas any more, which
are required due to some security fixes (2.16 doesn't work with
the mail interface, it requires at least 2.17.4) if you want to
make it publically available.

Cheers,
        Moritz