Comment by agwa

2 days ago

The simple task of following a bug requires you to:

1. Send an empty email to a special address for the bug.

2. Wait 15-30 minutes for Debian's graylisting mail server to accept your email and reply with a confirmation email.

3. Reply to the confirmation email.

The last time I tried to follow a bug, I never got the confirmation email.

In practically every other bug tracker, following a bug is just pressing a button.

Like most of Debian's developer tooling, the bug tracker gets the job done (most of the time) but it's many times more inconvenient than it needs to be.

6 comments

agwa

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kstrauser  2 days ago

Fair points. But without looking at it myself, and for the benefit of people reading along, do you have to do that if you already have an account on the tracker? For instance, it's easy to follow issues on GitHub, but that's after you've jumped through some similar hoops to create an account.

  • agwa  2 days ago

    There is no way to create an account for the Debian bug tracker. You have to jump through these hoops every single time you want to follow a bug.

  • gspr  2 days ago

    I really wish we could have both. An interactive web frontend, and the classic email-centric bug tracker, both serving the same data. I think both have its strengths. I suppose that the job is massive given how enormous and fast-moving the first have become.

  • IshKebab  2 days ago

    Yeah but virtually every developer in the world has already jumped through that hoop. They don't need to do it again for every project.

    Also the hoop can be as simple as "click here to sign in with <other account you already have>".