Re: debbugs.el

["Evgeny M. Zubok" <evgeny.zubok@tochka.ru>]

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> writes:

> That was my motivation writing debbugs.el. I've also started an nnir
> integration, but I failed badly due to missing gnus knowledge.

There is debian-el package in Debian repository. It is also the suitable
place to push debbugs.el into. debian-el has a number of useful
features: you can file a bug with (debian-bug), fill the tags in the
mail body, compose control messages for control@bugs.debian.org
(debian-bts-control), download mbox with log of selected bug number,
view this mbox in Gnus as a tree (debian-bug-get-bug-as-email), reply to
someone.

> OTOH, the debbugs SOAP interface is poor, there are only very basic
> information one could retrieve, and there is no "activiation" function
> (changing whatever for a bug). So it might be better, we first make a
> prototype implementation integrating it with nnir etc, before adding it
> to Emacs core. For this purpose, it might be sufficient to bring it to
> elpa (or gnus) for a while.

I made an attempt to create Emacs interface to Debbugs/SOAP year
ago. I've wrote a simple SOAP client library in Emacs Lisp. By using
this library my debbugs-mode requested for a bug list (filtered by
different parameters: package, severity, tags, etc.) along with the
status information for every bug. Bug reports are grouped by severity,
sorted by bug number and displayed in outline-mode (folding/unfolding
out of a box).

One year old screenshot:

http://s006.radikal.ru/i214/1001/d1/08ef5f85246e.png

I didn't use the SOAP to request the bug logs because Debbugs/SOAP won't
send the attachments. When I hit RET against the bug entry, the
maintainer's mbox for selected bug is downloaded. mbox can be opened
either in Gnus or in RMAIL. I used the latter to be neutral to the users
of different mail programs: Gnus, Wunderlust, etc. Any message from the
log can be replied with your favourite mail program (Gnus in my case).

My work can be viewed as early technical preview; it has many dirty
hacks (hardcoded XML namespaces in SOAP client library is the most
simple example), bugs. The code is ugly, I was in hurry to make the mode
work. That's because it's not published yet. :)

I want to start hacking again and hope to finish it some day. :)