Bug/problem reporting: use GitHub or use GNATS ?

sskras commented 2 years ago

@bsiegert commented 5 hours ago on issue #101:

@sskras If your bug report was about a different problem, then it does not belong here.

I know. I just saw that both problems from me and @jgoerzen had something in common:

"I'm not quite sure where to go with all these things;"

So I used the opportunity to stress this generic question.

There is no SLO on replies to bug reports.

Thanks for the tip. Some more questions:

How can I ping the related community for the possible fixes or at least direction of the needed research?
Which place has wider audience of contributors / higher priority at looking at bugs: this repo or the Gnats system? I wonder if it be useful to replicate my pkg/56611 report on GitHub.
What is the generic flow of fixing / lifecycle of the bug / ethics of fix management for pkgsrc:
- Are bugs here allowed stay open forever ?
- Can I offer patches based on different approaches (even hacks) without getting banned from being reviewed?
- What is the patch reviewing procedure – is it a team or a single, dedicated person usually working on that?

Please excuse the newbie which got lost:) Thanks!

jperkin commented 2 years ago

In no particular order:

Use whichever bug reporting system you are more comfortable with. The aim is to make it as easy as possible for users to contribute bug reports, and we'll figure it out from there.
There are no indicators as to which system is more popular amongst developers. Personally I hate GNATS, other developers hate GitHub, the only important thing is that we get bug reports.
Please don't replicate bugs across systems.
We have no interest in pointless bug statistics, so yes we're happy for bugs to stay open for as long as possible (within reason, obviously we'll occasionally close out issues if they refer to packages that were upgraded 15 years ago or are for OS that are no longer available).
Use the mailing lists for queries of a more technical nature, tech-pkg for packaging and infrastructure questions, pkgsrc-users for anything related to use of the packages themselves.
I'd recommend using IRC (Libera #pkgsrc) or Matrix for general queries and help with working on things yourself, it's thousands of times easier to work through these things in real time rather than the delayed back-and-forth of email or issues.
It's an entirely volunteer project, there are no teams or dedicated people for anything. Volunteers work on things as and when they are interested in doing so. We love it when new people come onboard to help out, and so I'd much rather help someone get up to speed on pkgsrc so they can fix things themselves instead of me having to do it for them.

As for http://gnats.netbsd.org/56611, I think that was fixed recently, you should try with a newer checkout.

sskras commented 2 years ago

Thanks for the very detailed answer, Jonathan! You went straight through all my concerns.

It's probably nicest and most human answer I have received during last 10y, really. Very nice, thank you:)

NetBSD / pkgsrc