[plt-dev] Bug reports

I've recently looked at some of the capabilities of bug reports on
various hosted places.

* One appealing feature is using github (since we'll have a mirror
  there), but it doesn't look like it allows generating reports from
  emails or some way to generate reports anonymously (perhaps using
  the api, but this complicates things).  Also, it doesn't look like
  you can get email notifications, and no attachements.  And another
  problem is that people need to create accounts there instead of
  managing it from a central place.

* Most other similar places are similarly limited (launchpad does have
  attachements, but is limited in a similar way).

* The most promising thing that I've seen is a pair of websites:
  tenderapp.com and lighthouse.com.  IIUC, the intention of the former
  is as a front end for users to post "issues", and for the latter to
  be dealing with more concrete bug reports.  The interfaces fr both
  are similarly polished, but there are some differences: the first
  can accept new reports from anyone (no login needed), and the second
  has more of the usual stuff you expect a bug report tool to have.
  In addition, the second one can be integrated with a repository:
  accepting keywords in emails that can do almost anything (close
  bugs, assign them, etc).

  For companies, I think that the intention is for some QA department
  to deal with the first and file bugs against the second (with a way
  to link the two).  The main problem with using only lighthouse that
  I see is that bugs cannot be filed by unregistered users -- it is
  possible to send an email that is coming from a registered user
  (eg "bugs at plt-scheme.org") and have that create a report, but then
  the bug seems to come from that address and I don't see a way to CC
  the real bug reporter.

In any case, I can't really allocate more time for this.  I was hoping
that Sam, being the most vocal about how gnats is ancient, would take
it on, but he's not interested.

So, in case someone wants to look further into these options, and
either find a way to make one of them do what we need, or find another
option that does that, or even play with gnats itself to make it do
the extra things that these tools do: please contact me and I'll tell
you what the basic requirements are, and I'll help in finding a way to
migrate the current bug DB.  Otherwise, it looks like sticking with
the current setup is the most profitable.

(This is not an attempt at starting a discussion about these things,
I've spent enough time trying to figure them out...)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!