Gnus development remains haphazard?

Gnus development remains haphazard?

[Matt Swift]

I just read a thread here in which the question, does Oort Gnus have a
set of particular goals?  Replies suggested about half a dozen
possible major goals.  I've been away from this group for a while, but
if this thread is indicative, Gnus is still being developed in a
haphazard way.  Perhaps before tackling those major new goals, it
would be best to make development more efficient in general.

A bug tracking system would be very helpful for all users, would 
avoid duplication of labor in analyzing and solving problems, and
would increase the number of people who make occasional contributions
of an analysis or fix.

My impression is that for the last five years, bugs that are reported
are not always analyzed, those that are analyzed are not always fixed,
and fixes are not always incorporated into releases.  One consequence
of the difficulty of bug squashing in Gnus is that development efforts
are often channeled instead toward new functionality, rather than
making core functions more stable, sensible, documented, and versatile
(not to mention accessible to new users, etc.).  

In addition, a bug tracking system is also an effective way to
organize, coordinate, and focus development of new functionality -- a
"wishlist" or "missing feature" bug.

I don't have the resources or knowledge to establish a bug tracking
system, but I can promise that I would use it, and I do believe that
having one would "pay for itself" rather quickly with improvements in
Gnus.

Re: Gnus development remains haphazard?

[Alan Shutko]

Matt Swift <swift@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> I don't have the resources or knowledge to establish a bug tracking
> system,

Both sourceforge and savannah do, though.  It might be useful to start
taking advantage of some of their tools.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
With your bare hands?!?

Re: Gnus development remains haphazard?

[William M. Perry]

Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:

> Matt Swift <swift@alum.mit.edu> writes:
> 
> > I don't have the resources or knowledge to establish a bug tracking
> > system,
> 
> Both sourceforge and savannah do, though.  It might be useful to start
> taking advantage of some of their tools.

Savannah is very nice, and would probably make a better 'official' home
than sourceforge.  Gnus is an official GNU component, eh?

-bp

Re: Gnus development remains haphazard?

[Matt Swift]

>> "W" == William wrote:

    W> Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:
    >> Matt Swift <swift@alum.mit.edu> writes:
    >> 
    >> > I don't have the resources or knowledge to establish a bug tracking
    >> > system,
    >> 
    >> Both sourceforge and savannah do, though.  It might be useful to start
    >> taking advantage of some of their tools.

    W> Savannah is very nice, and would probably make a better 'official' home
    W> than sourceforge.  Gnus is an official GNU component, eh?

I thought of sourceforge soon after my original posting.  I didn't
know about savannah.gnu.org yet, thanks.

There are also independent bug-tracking systems like Debian's BTS (I
am familiar with this as a user of it -- I think it's fantastic),
Bugzilla, and Gnats (I've never used either of these).

Gnus is an official GNU component, according the gnus.el that comes
with my Emacs 20.7, but Gnus doesn't have a page on www.gnu.org or
savannah.gnu.org, I don't think.

I am willing to help establish or maintain a Gnus presence at gnu.org,
or a different bug-tracking initiative.  I have some relevant skills,
but I don't have the global knowledge of Gnus and its development to
make good high-level decisions.  I invite anyone who does and wants to
coordinate an effort like this to write me privately, and I will make
some time to give some assistance.

Re: Gnus development remains haphazard?

[Kai Großjohann]

On 02 Apr 2001, Matt Swift wrote:

> Gnus is an official GNU component, according the gnus.el that comes
> with my Emacs 20.7, but Gnus doesn't have a page on www.gnu.org or
> savannah.gnu.org, I don't think.

Well, CC mode, GUD, and all the other packages which are part of Emacs
don't have their own page, either.

But it would make sense to have a separate BTS for Gnus, since it's
developed independently of Emacs.

I think moving Gnus to Savannah sounds like a good idea.  I wonder
what Lars thinks?

kai
-- 
Be indiscrete.  Do it continuously.

Re: Gnus development remains haphazard?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> I think moving Gnus to Savannah sounds like a good idea.  I wonder
> what Lars thinks?

Well, Savannah is a kinda young project, so I think it's premature to
move stuff there.  But it looks promising.

(On a selfish note, I like having the Gnus cvs repository somewhere
near, so that when the network connection to the US goes down, I can
still access it.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen