Subject: Per-bug subscription

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:40:51 -0500

Package: debbugs.gnu.org
Severity: wishlist

Debbugs claims to provide a per-bug subscription feature, just send
mail to eg 123-subscribe.

However, this feature doesn't work, since Debbugs doesn't actually
implement it. All it does in response to a subscribe email is send out
another email (via bug_list_forward in process) to a "bugs=" address @
the configuration variable bug_subscription_domain (defaults to the
list domain).

It seems the actual implementation of this feature is handled by the
Debian bug mailing list software somehow. I can't find an explanation
of how it actually works anywhere.

At the very least, the Debbugs documentation ought to explain that
this feature doesn't work out of the box. Ideally, it would explain
how to make it work.

It seems unlikely we will implement this feature for Emacs, I'm just
filing this as a reminder/gripe.

References:

http://code.erisian.com.au/Wiki/debbugs/BugSubscriptionIdeas

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg00050.html

    * Added per bug subscription support to debbugs, which relies on
    an external MLM to actually deal with the requests; currently
    works with eoc and sends messages to bugn...@$glistdomain.
    (closes: #34071) This feature still needs to be modified slightly
    so that it can be enabled or disabled, as not all installs of
    debbugs will want to run eoc.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-03/msg00163.html

   We also have hooks for EoC to allow for subscription to single bugs
   if that's desired.

In the above, MLM = "mailing list manager", and EOC = "Enemies of
Carlotta". We use GNU Mailman instead, so the Debian configuration is
unlikely to help, even if we knew what it was.

http://liw.iki.fi/liw/eoc/index.html