On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 6:06 AM, zooko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Folks:
>
> Having http://bugs.darcs.net down gave me more incentive to work on
> my "alternate bug tracker":
>
> http://allmydata.org/trac/darcs-2
>
> Until yesterday there were two "TODO" items on it for me:
>
> 1. Import the ticket information from roundup to populate the issue
> tracker here.
>
> 2. Install the trac plugin that allows you to open new tickets by
> sending e-mail.
>
> I just now got the feature of opening tickets by e-mail working, so I
> can mark #2 off.
>
> To open issue tickets in this tracker, send e-mail to
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".


I did that, http://allmydata.org/trac/darcs-2/ticket/7  But now I can't seem
to edit the bug nor did I receive confirmation email.  Is an account
required?  If so, that's not so bad for devs, they'd probably want an
account anyway, but I can see that being very annoying for users.



>
>
>
> NOTE: The core darcs developers have not yet agreed to use this tool,
> and I'm not planning to fix all the bugs that you mail to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] myself, so for now consider this solely a
> demonstration -- showing is more informative than telling.
>
>
> The key feature which makes trac more interesting than roundup for
> darcs development is integration of source code and revision
> control.  This enables easy interlinking between the tickets, the
> source code that the tickets are about, and the patches that change
> the source code and close the tickets.


Could you show us how to do this source code linking in the ticket?  I
wanted to play around, but I can't edit the ticket I made.  I'm also not
convinced that trac is inherently better than roundup.  With roundup there
are definitely things I don't like such as the current breakage, it's a pain
to search for things and I get the impression it's not well maintained.

Trac has the advantage that it is fairly well maintained and growing a lot
the last few years.  There is a lot to be said for using software that has
momentum.  But, I have often felt like trac is a bit obnoxious to use.  I
recall sumbitting a cut&paste bug report in some trac ticket once and as I
recall it assumed I wanted to use wiki markup so it ignored all the
whitespace.  This turned out to make the bug report illegible.  Maybe it was
a fluke or user error; I'm willing to give it a second chance.  I'd like to
play with this instance to see how that aspect works.


>
>
> To see what I mean, please browse the darcs source code on this trac
> by clicking on the "Browse Source" button at the top.
>
> You can see the history of all bug reports, patches, wiki edits, and
> so on on the "Timeline".


This changeset viewer is nice:
http://allmydata.org/trac/darcs-2/changeset/5709

Although, trac was obviously built for svn and not darcs.  Those rXXXX
numbers are not such a good idea with darcs.  I'd much rather have a link to
the patch name.  The "view changes" button that appears on some pages seems
broken or silly.  TortoiseSVN has a similar feature, but at least in
Tortoise you can choose your revision numbers by looking at a searchable log
(basically darcs changes).


>
> The "Buildbot" button takes you to the buildbot, of course, and the
> "View Tickets" and "New Ticket" buttons do just what you'd expect.


I went looking for this promised "New Ticket" button but I cannot find it.
While I was there I noticed that the ticket page has no search feature, just
filters that can be defined.  Next I looked at the search page.  From here,
I can do a search of tickets, but it seems extremely limited.  I think even
the current roundup search, which I'm not terribly fond of, is better.  Is
the site indexed by google?  Could I at least search that way?  Given the
current URL I think if I specified site:allmydata.org I would get too much.

Check out the source code browsing -- it is beautifully highlighted
> literate Haskell source, liberally hyperlinked with its own revision
> control history.  Try the "annotate" button when viewing a file of
> source code, which shows you which patches most recently touched each
> line of code.


Yes, the annotate feature is pretty nice, although I found it tricky to
actually go visit the patches that are linked in the margin.  It seems to
require some combination of clicking and then hovering.  And then I was
told:
OperationalError: database is locked


>
> Here's a good example:
>
> http://allmydata.org/trac/darcs-2/browser/src/Darcs/Commands/
> Optimize.lhs
>
> Note that since darcs can be slow at certain history-searching
> operations, your requests to view source code may time out or get a
> 'database is locked' error.  This should clear up after a minute (and
> subsequent requests to view the same thing should be fast since trac
> +darcs caches results).  If it doesn't, please let me know.


I would hate to explain this to people.  It's kind of annoying and not the
sort of thing I have much patience with.

Ultimately, I see a change as expensive.  People that currently use roundup
have to learn something new and then there is the migration of urls and
existing bugs (which will have broken links internally now).  Trac may very
well be better on several levels, but will it provide enough Goodness(tm)
compared to roundup and the current wiki to warrant a migration?  I can't
tell, but I would guess not.

I appreciate your hard work Zooko.  You obviously want to make darcs better
and darcs development easier.  Is migrating to trac the right way?

Jason
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