[darcs-users] a new issue tracker that darcs developers could consider using (Re: bugs.darcs.net issues)

[zooko]

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  
"darcsbugs at allmydata.org".


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  
darcsbugs at allmydata.org 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.

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".

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

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.

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.

Thanks to Lele Gaifax for the very nice trac+darcs plugin to  
integrate darcs into trac!  (Trac was originally written to use  
Subversion.)


Regards,

Zooko