Profit of a sort: a 'minor' bug for valid reasons is classified as invalid bug; the claim itself suggests an 'important' bug, and its advertisement.
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 04:33:28 -0700
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Debian Bug Tracking System) wrote:
> j2re1.4 isn't part of Debian, so we can't accept bugs on it. Please send
> this to wherever you got the package.
Never do I wish to spam the fine BTS. But what puzzles me is how there's a BTS
page for 'jre1.4'. Before submitting this misplaced bug, I checked if those
typos were already submitted, here:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=j2re1.4
(Bear with me on my error trail...) The typos were not submitted. Since the
page existed, it logically followed that Debian ought to accept bugs for any
package the BTS has a slot for. Of course now you state that it needn't. Yet
the package was on a "bugs.debian.org" server, which seems official. The page
above makes no note that it should never (or seldom) be used. 'reportbug'
didn't reject it.
Looking at the 'archived' bug page for 'j2re1.4', the plot thickens:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=j2re1.4&archive=yes
Apparently you and helpful others have been resolving bugs by closing them as
foreign to Debian, for this package since 2002. I counted nine bug submitters,
I'd be the tenth. Quoting the earliest one:
"Sorry, the fact that it isn't in the normal Debian archives means that
you can't file bugs against it, so I have to close this. You'll need to
report bugs to the Blackdown people instead."
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=169096&archive=yes
Latest archived:
"j2re1.4 is not an official Debian package, and I'm therefore closing
this bug. Please report this issue to the third party packager
instead."
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=246415&archive=yes
Apparently this "ghost package" problem has wasted the time of ten reporters,
(like me), and perhaps fewer than ten maintainers, (like you). Perhaps other
"ghost packages" exist, and those also waste time. I'd dub that an 'important'
bug.
Questions:
1) Has this "ghost package" bug been submitted? I'm not even sure
where to look for it -- I'd appreciate if you could point out where, if you
know that it exists.
2) Lacking that, I'll do it if nobody else wants to. (Advice on where
to report it would be welcome.)
3) Can users easily recognize such "ghost packages" in advance?
If there is a bug in place, or after it's in place, consider the advantages of
changing, for the time being, how such bugs are closed. In particular, it
would be better to include a boilerplate paragraph, and URL, to the "BTS ghost
package problem" bug. That way, the next time anybody closes a bug like this,
they can point the wayward reporter to the page with the real bug, and it'll
gain mindshare as a known bug -- and may get fixed sooner.
(BTW: a suggested fix -- have any current archive pages for packages like
this warn that they accept NO INPUT, and have the bug server bounce any
messages to foreign packages. Don't make any new pages like this. But keep
the old ones; deleting them from the archives would make holes in the bug
count. )
Re:_Bug#302738:__man_validlocale__typo:__nonexistant_
Description: Binary data
