On Fri, 30 May 2025, Simon McVittie wrote:n > There are a couple of scenarios in which I would find it useful to > be able to reserve a bug number somehow, and then create the real bug > report later:
These are some interesting use cases! Thanks for sharing them. [...] > A crude implementation of this would be to reserve a bug number by sending > an essentially empty bug report to an unmonitored pseudo-package, and > then when I'm ready to submit the actual bug report, reassign that bug to > the target package with all the details, cc'ing its @packages.debian.org > address; but that seems unnecessarily noisy. This is what I'd suggest right now, and is probably along the lines of what I'd implement, since anyone can mail any bug at any time or modify any bug at any time. The key issues right now are: 1. It's not possible to update the initial submitted message with a new message to the BTS. 2. There are significant differences between the information you get as maintainer on reassignment of a bug versus what you get when you submit a new bug. Once 1 and 2 are fixed, the workflow would be: submit bug with fake package (you'll get a warning that the package doesn't exist, but that's OK) to reserve a bug. send new message with details, patch, etc. and use the control pseudoheader or equivalent to reassign the bug to the correct package, set the right version, retitle, etc. -- Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free. -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p25
