No bug tracker

[Gavin Smith]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 05:57:58PM +0100, Bogdan wrote:
>  No bugtracker? Not good from a bug reporter's point of view :). I thought
> all FSF projects use the same bugtracker, it would seem logical. You
> probably have a good reason for not to have one, but don't you sometimes get
> 10 reports about the same problem? :)

Users are free to write to bug-texinfo@gnu.org with bugs.  It doesn't
mean we don't care about bugs.  Having a bug tracker doesn't mean that
the bugs will get fixed or that formally reported bugs are something
that the developers care about.  You've likely had the experience of
submitting bugs to bug trackers and then the reports being ignored --
I know I have.  It's a volunteer project and contributors will work on
what they themselves consider to be valuable, not what a bug tracker
orders them to.

I also find that a lot of reported bugs are questionable, and may
not really be bugs.  Rather than risk pissing people off by closing
their bugs immediately as NOTABUG, WONTFIX or the like, or having the
tracker fill up with 1000s of junk bugs that will never be closed,
it's better to have a discussion on the mailing list to improve mutual
understanding of the issues involved.

If there is a clear bug that doesn't get fixed, and it's likely there
are contributors with capacity to work on the issue, the best course of
action is to keep on emailing about it if you are worried it has been
forgotten about.  This shows some commitment on behalf of the person
reporting the bug and gives an indication it is something worth worrying
about, if the reporter has been motivated to follow it up.

The scale of this project is also a factor here, and if it were a larger
project a bug tracking system might be more useful, although I don't really
have experience of this.