Subject: reportbug: should submit bug reports to Devuan & indicate distribution

From: Ansgar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 20:34:08 +0100

Package: reportbug
Version: 12.0.0+devuan2
Severity: grave

Devuan's reportbug must be fixed to

1) Submit bug reports to Devuan's bug tracker. Also for packages not
modified by Devuan as the environment matters. For example, Devuan uses
split-/usr which Debian no longer supports and which causes noise in
Debian's bug tracker.

(This is the same for all derivatives, for example Ubuntu reports bugs
to Launchpad.)

2) Include proper and honest information about the distribution. [1]
has no indication it is not from Debian except for the "X-Reportbug-
Version" header; in [2] there are also package versions with "devuan".
This makes investigating bugs hard.

Thanks,
Ansgar

  [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1057002;msg=5
  [2]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1057000;msg=5

---

From: Mark Hindley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:34:43 +0000

Ansgar,

Thanks for this.

I think you may misunderstand what Devuan's reportbug does.

By default it reports to Devuan's BTS.

For unforked packages it asks the user which BTS to use (whilst still defaulting to
Devuan). 

The reportbug System Information identifies the Distribution as Devuan.

What more do you suggest?

Thanks and best wishes

Mark

---

From: Ansgar <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 20:59:11 +0100

Hi,

On Tue, 2023-11-28 at 15:34 +0000, Mark Hindley wrote:
> For unforked packages it asks the user which BTS to use (whilst still
> defaulting to Devuan). 

It should recommend users to file the bug report with Devuan if they
are not sure whether it is not a Devuan-specific bug or not. This is
recommended by Debian's derivative guidelines[1], though AFAIU Devuan
often does the opposite:

+---
| For distributions that modify core or non-leaf packages
| (especially libraries), it is recommended to redirect all bug
| reports to your distribution's tracker.
| [...]
| For distributions that modify configuration in ways that affect
| other packages, it is recommended to redirect all bug reports to
| your distribution's tracker.
+---

  [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines#Bug_reports

As Devuan introduces major differences like split-usr, it is
increasingly likely that a large class of issues will only happen on
Devuan, but not Debian.

> The reportbug System Information identifies the Distribution as

It does not. From the bug report I referenced in the initial mail:

+---
| -- System Information:
| Debian Release: trixie/sid
|   APT prefers experimental
|   APT policy: (1, 'experimental')
| merged-usr: no
| Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
| Foreign Architectures: i386
+---

which does not say "Devuan" anywhere, except in the header "X-
Reportbug-Version: 12.0.0+devuan2" and some package versions which
include "devuan".

It might be a bug when the report is submitted to Debian's BTS instead
of Devuan's BTS. No idea.

Ansgar

---

From: Mark Hindley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:01:11 +0000

Control: tags -1 pending

Ansgar,

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 08:59:11PM +0100, Ansgar wrote:
> of Devuan's BTS.

Indeed this was correct: we need not to use debian_infofunc() in this case.

Thanks for pointing it out.

Mark

---

From: Ansgar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:21:49 +0100

> Thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks for fixing this.

Ansgar