[maemo-developers] Proposal: XSBC-Bugtracker in debian package

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Friday 28 August 2009 14:38:33 Niels Breet wrote:
> XSBC-Bugtracker:
> The URL of the bugtracker for this package, preferably (when applicable)
> the URL where you can directly file a bug. The content of this field is a
> simple URL without any surrounding characters such as <>.

Thanks, Niels.

I think this is a good idea.

I presume a garage tracker is an acceptable URL.  If Ed ever gets the chance 
to do his "autobuild from garage" proposal he could default this to the 
associated tracker!

> When this feature is accepted, it should be added to the Packaging Policy
> too.

This is where it gets a bit more tricky.  I think it should be added as a 
strong recommendation, for user/ packages.

Much as I would like it to be for all user/ packages I don't think we can make 
it mandatory.  Commercial application publishers are unlikely to want to do 
it and there may also be some applications (particularly small ones with a 
small user base) which just do not have the facility to do this but which are 
still useful to have available.

It may have some value for library packages (and other non-user packages) but 
it is clearly not necessary for those -- most people never know or care that 
they exist.

In previous discussions there has been talk of using this to provide a common 
UI for bug reporting (or even to automatically report crashes).  That would 
require that the bug reporting systems all worked in the same way (or all 
supported some particular URL syntax for reporting bugs).  While that would 
be useful I think it is impossible for the immediate future and should not be 
part of this proposal.  If/when someone comes up with a way to do that we can 
add another control file field to indicate support for automatic bug 
reporting.

Graham