Subject: bug#26380: Getting a copy of the GNU Debbugs

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 13:11:03 +0200

Hi Glenn,

Reviving an old thread…

Glenn Morris <[email-masked]> skribis:

> The short answer is that debbugs.gnu.org is very unlikely to get any
> features from upstream debbugs, unless they are simple and
> self-contained patches (I'm guessing these are not, it sounds like they
> would touch a bunch of areas of the code).
>
> The longer answer is that d.g.o started 10 years ago based on a
> development branch of debbugs. Since then our version has been edited
> quite a bit. Edits are done in-place on the live system, with no true
> version control. So changes do not go to upstream, or vice versa.
>
> Obviously this is bad. The way to fix it would be:
>
> 1) identify exactly which version of debbugs we started from (I don't
> even know)
> 2) convert local changes to proper VCS commits
> 3) merge in upstream commits since
> 4) set up a test system using the new version
> 5) when satisfied, make test system the live version
>
> I know this is what needs to be done, but I don't have any enthusiasm
> for doing it, I'm sorry.
>
>> (where is the debbugs.gnu.org code anyway?)
>
> It only exists as the live code on debbugs.gnu.org (and as system backups).
> I can provide a dump of it if someone wants it.

I would be interested in having a dump of it.  Could you upload it
somewhere?

Then I can take the time to have it in a Git repo on Savannah (even if
it means starting without any VCS history), and from there it would be
great if you could use it to commit changes that you make.

Not as good as creating a proper branch of Debbugs, but still an
improvement IMO.

TIA!

Ludo’.