[isabelle-dev] Isabelle/jEdit: Feature Requests for Ctrl-Click

[Makarius]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012, Christian Sternagel wrote:

> Sometimes it is just hard to know whether some snag was not detected yet 
> or is already in the pipeline... so I report anything ;).

After so many years, Isabelle pilelines have become looong, so it is very 
likely that whatever you name is in there already.  Nonetheless, you 
should report whatever you observe and find relevant.  There might be new 
things coming from that that are *not* yet in any pipeline system from the 
Ural, and it always helps to figure out priorities what needs to be pulled 
or pushed forward a bit more quickly than 5-10 years.


> Maybe it would be a good idea to collect "feature-requests" in the wiki?

We are back to the tracker issue, which has already become a running gag 
on this mailing list.  A wiki is very bad technology to track feature 
reports or bug requests.  There are dedicated trackers for that, but most 
of them are also quite bad.  More recently some non-bad trackers have 
emerged, so it might be worth revisiting the question with a clear mind at 
some point.

Apart from that, technology alone never solves a problem.  It needs to be 
supported by people behind it, and this is exactly where most 
tracker-based project that I've ever seen are lacking.  E.g. when I put 
something on one of the many jEdit trackers on Sourceforge (another bad 
technology), it takes a very long time to get any feedback on it, even 
just that it has been seen by someone.

Other projects like Cygwin define themselves as explicitly tracker-free. 
When I posted something on their mailing list -- an actual "issue" -- I've 
got feedback almost as quickly as normally on isabelle-dev.


> (The official place of collection is currently the mailing list, but it 
> is not that easy to extract this kind of information.) I mean, in order 
> to have a place to point like: "first look there and only if you do not 
> find your 'feature' there, write to the mailing list".

The mailing list archive also helps.  It has the advantage that it 
provides an historical context to some issue and its discussion, unlike a 
wiki that is always known to be outdated without explicit clues. (This is 
also a reason why it is so important to quote changeset ids when pointing 
to anything in the repository.)


 	Makarius