Subject: bug#26380: Adding 'summary' and 'outlook' fields from upstream debbugs?

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2017 20:52:23 -0400

[email-masked] wrote:

> I was looking at https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control and I found
> two commands that debbugs.gnu.org lacks, that seem like they would be
> very useful to have:
>
>     summary bugnumber [message number | summary text]
[...]
>     outlook bugnumber [message number | outlook text]
[...]
> Is the debbugs.gnu.org code still close enough to upstream that it would
> be practical to get these?

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.

Sorry about this situation. I didn't create it, but I haven't made it
any better in this regard. The system works and is stable, but is
unlikely to get new features, unless someone gets inspired.