[Linux-disciples] Keeping track of bugs and fixes

[Adam Rosi-Kessel]

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> Is there any centralized place to keep track of all these
> bugs and fixes? Are people supposed to submit their bugs to
> the most central location? Or is there some technological
> approach? Let's say that I come up with a new distribution
> (say, Lubuntu), to which people can submit bugs for all the
> included packages. Can I somehow latch onto the
> more-upstream bug databases, so that any bugs submitted to
> me also get submitted to upstream? In general, is there any
> good way to integrate these bug databases?

Not really. At least with Debian, the general idea is that Debian users
will submit bugs and/or fixes to the Debian Maintainer, who will then
either (1) fix the bug and submit the patch upstream or (2) file the bug
upstream and indicate in the Debian BTS the URL of the upstream bug
number and then migrate the fix back to the Debian package when it is
fixed upstream.

There is a Debian BTS tag for 'upstream' which indicates that the bug
comes from upstream and not the Debian versions specifically, although
this is little used.  There is also 'fixed-upstream' tag which means
what you think it would.

Sophisticated users can and will often bypass the distribution's bug
reporting system and just go straight upstream. This is basically a sane
way of doing things--the idea is that the distribution, be it Debian or
Red Hat, should be the "first line of defense" so upstream developers
aren't bombarded with frivolous bug reports, but if you know what you're
doing it's probably more efficient to file the bug and/or fix upstream,
and then file a distribution bug pointing to the upstream bug just so
the Debian developer and everyone else know it's been identified.
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