[gentoo-dev] Gentoo-Bugger is looking for testers :-)

[Michael Cummings]

GENTOO-BUGGER IS NOT AN OFFICIAL GENTOO PROJECT

Sorry for the caps, but I wanted that to be clear from the start so there
wasn't any confusion. I'm looking for testers of gentoo-bugger. Anyone
interested please give it a whirl, report any bugs, complaints, RFF's, etc.
Please email me directly with questions - I'm subscribed to -dev, but am
horrible at reading my mailing list mail in a timely fashion.

What is it? 
        Gentoo-Bugger is a commandline, perl application for interfacing
        with an existing bugzilla account on Gentoo's Bug server.
        Gentoo-Bugger does not create an account for you; it could, but at
        this time that seems like a bad idea (easily abused). Gentoo-Bugger
        simulates a web connection to the bugzilla server, allowing you to
        create new bugs, edit (if you're a dev?) existing bugs, show bugs,
        upload attachments, download attachments, etc., etc., etc. Pretty
        much *almost* all of the functionality you have with a web browser,
        but on the command line in one shot fashion. In addition, bugger
        will support multiple accounts for bugzilla. The idea here is that
        it could potentially be used with other bugzilla systems (this is
        neither tested nor confirmed, and known not to be true in the case
        of mozilla's bugzilla system). Its a theory anyway.

Why?
        There are users and devs out there, and you know who you are, who
        need to be able to access bugs quickly, update a bug fast, without
        the overhead and interface of a web browser. 

Where?
        http://gentoo-bugger.sourceforge.net
        You will want to download the gentoo-bugger-testing package. This is
        in fact newer than the point release listed and contains additions
        and fixes not found elsewhere (heh).

What else?
        The real "functionality" of Gentoo-Bugger is all located in a perl
        module. So if you know perl, and feel like hacking away at figuring
        out how my brain works, and how poorly I can write a module, the
        perl module itself (installs into the Gentoo::Bugger namespace) can
        be used for other purposes, such as pulling and rdf feed from your
        current bugs, generating calender items, etc. Some of this will be
        released in sample code eventually (one project at a time), but for
        the intrepid masochist the raw tool is there now. Gentoo-Bugger is
        an adaptation of Andy Lester's WWW::Bugzilla module, so if you are
        familiar with the source for that, you will see some repetition. The
        reason for the departure is that WWW::Bugzilla was designed for the
        creation and editing of bugs only - Gentoo::Bugger is a little
        broader in scope, with the intention of truly interacting with the
        bugzilla system.

What do you need to install it?
        dev-perl/WWW-Mechanize-1* (tested with 1.0301 and 1.02)
        dev-perl/HTML-Strip
        dev-perl/config-general

Is there an ebuild?
        Not yet. There will be one once this is out of testing, and it will
        be submitted to the tree in the traditional fashion - via bugzilla,
        for review by other devs. Hubris is a beautiful thing, so I don't
        feel comfortable being both the author and a dev to handle its
        review for portage.

Bug reporting?
        Do NOT report bugs about this on bugs.gentoo.org. It's not in
        portage. It's not fair to any one else on the perl team (or other
        affected teams). Please report all bugs on sourceforge in the
        project's area.

Any known bugs?
        Not really that I am aware of. 2 "missing features" (not really
        bugs) are 
        1) Help page mentions a tk invocation. This is not available yet due
        to drastic changes in the original architecture. I have to start
        that part over again (if there is even interest)
        2) It needs better error messages. Sometimes its informative,
        sometimes not.

Ok, I think that's everything. Let me know if you have any questions, and
thanks for reading such a long ramble :)

-Mike