Re: Build errors in GNATS 4.2.0 on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS

[John P. Willis]

On 8/22/21 11:11 AM, Chad Walstrom wrote:
> John P. Willis <jpw@coherent-logic.com> writes:
> > So it appears that a good deal of work needs to be done to bring GNATS
> > forward and make it compile properly on current systems.
> >
> > Should I attempt to go further, or are the GNATS developers already
> > working on something in an official capacity? I noticed that GNATS is
> > also gone from the Debian and Ubuntu apt repositories, since Jessie.
>
> I do not know of any official efforts to bring GNU GNATS up to date with
> current compilers. In January of this year, John Darrington approached
> me to ask if we should decomission the project. I agreed that if we
> didn't see renewed interest in the project or someone to take over
> maintainership, that its time has probably come.  It has been five years
> since any work has been done on GNU GNATS (Alex reported a bug and
> submitted a patch in 2016). Is now the time to pick it back up again or
> to officially set it down?
>
> GNU GNATS holds a unique space in its approach to bug tracking, and it
> has quite a rich history. However, there have been many FOSS competitors
> with features that align closer to how people manage their projects
> today.


One thing that might be of note is that NetBSD still seems to use GNATS
as its official bug tracking system. Perhaps the pkgsrc-specific patches
that keep GNATS available in their official repositories do some of the 
work needed? Per the legal requirements of the GNU project, it would 
seem any such work would need a sign-off from its authors prior to being
integrated in the upstream project, especially given the rather 
copyleft-hostile institutional ethos of NetBSD. Though, I'd also think 
the NetBSD folks would have a vested interest in seeing upstream 
development somewhat renewed, if they indeed wish to continue using it 
in production.

Personally, I feel that having a CLI option that's clearly free software 
rather than open-source, and also /not/ /primarily/ a 
web-based/"cloud"-based solution with a trillion lines of Ruby and 
Python code, Chef recipes, Docker containers, and all sorts of other 
bloated, baroque, and labyrinthine hooey, makes GNATS worth maintaining 
for the future. I have a hope--albeit faint and fading--that simple 
software will see a renaissance as the technical debt of over-engineered 
projects comes to a head.

> The last bit of work I had done for GNATS was an attempt to migrate the
> CVS repo to git using ESR's reposurgeon. I had gotten quite close, but I
> feel I got stuck in the minutia of history preservation. I should have
> cut-bait sooner and gotten something out there for people to play with.

I've not used reposurgeon, but have read/watched information about it 
from ESR. Seems like a good tool, though if I were to tackle this 
project, I'd probably just stick with CVS in the early days in order to 
focus on getting the software buildable/usable, prior to advancing the 
status quo on version control.

> So, this is primarily an email asking what level of interest there is
> for continuing to maintain or support GNU GNATS. If you're using the
> platform and have the time, let us know. If you are interested in
> becoming a GNU maintainer and would like to adopt this project, please
> let us know! Join Savannah and get on the project member list!

Coincidentally, I have recently gotten a Savannah account, as I have 
another package (interpreter for the MUMPS programming language and 
database) that I hope one day to offer to the GNU project.

I have a good deal of interest in GNATS, and could afford to put a few 
cycles towards it, especially as a companion to my own projects. It 
would obviously take some time to grok enough of the codebase to get 
productive with it, and initial successes would probably be sub-optimal, 
but getting old software compiling on new systems is something with 
which I have recent and pertinent experience.


Cheers,
John