On Thu, 9 Jul 2009, Brian Huffman wrote: > I think it's time to bring up the issue of bug tracking again. I just > replied to Peter Lammich on the Isabelle users list about a bug in the > locale package that has been known to exist for at least a year and a > half; it is unclear whether anyone has taken any responsibility for > fixing the bug, or indeed whether there is any plan to fix it at all. A > bug tracking system would have been very useful in this case.
When this question came up many many years ago, we were a bit reluctant to manage yet another system (the tracker), so started with an immediate low-tech solution: a plain file Admin/BUGS. Larry was the first who entered something, I was second and third, afterwards that file was never maintained by anybody, so I removed it (after resolving the remaining issues). Note that this is a bit similar to NEWS and CONTRIBUTORS which are ignored by most contributors. The big difference is that I usually take the pain to remind people of it, but only with half success: there have been many changes since Isabelle2009 but few are documented in NEWS. Anyway, "BUGS" is a very misleading name for unclarities in the system, which are quite often merely a misunderstanding how things could work, should work, or might work eventually. Some more knowlegeable people would track "ISSUES", not "BUGS" nor "FEATURES". One also needs extreme care when "fixing" problems: unless this is done by someone with a deep understanding of the component in question (usually the original author or main maintainer), it is usually introducing more problems than are resolved. Makarius