Thursday, August 27, 2009

Proposal: XSBC-Bugtracker in debian package

While implementing the maemo.org packages interface, I wanted to add a link to the bugtracker for a package or project. Eventually integrating bug reporting/searching, but more on that later. As all information is gathered from the debian packages themselves, it would make sense to have the bugtracker URL available in the control file.

There doesn't seem to be a default field in debian control files for and URL of the bugtracker which the project is using. Therefor I want to propose introducing the XSBC-Bugtracker field.

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 <>.

Example:

XSBC-Bugtracker: https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Wormux

By putting the bugtracker URL inside the package, people always have a way to find out where to file bugs. This could even be used for filing bugs through an application interface or crash reporter in the future.

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

Please let me know what you think. Discussion at talk.maemo.org.

3 comments:

Marius Gedminas said...

I love the idea.

Unknown said...

I can only agree with Marius, this is really a great idea.

Graham Cobb said...

This needs to be discussed on maemo-developers, not on Maemo Talk.

maemo-developers is the canonical place for developers to hear about and discuss things that affect them. Most developers do not track every new topic on Maemo Talk.

Note also that this very topic has been discussed several times before. You may want to look through the archives.