[db48x]

You can search the mailing list archive via the web page: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/

You track the issue by waiting for replies to your email. With a bug tracking system you would wait for replies to the bug report in exactly the same way.

It is not the user’s _job_ to triage bug reports or direct them to the right person, but it is _helpful_ if they can take a minute to peruse the list of kernel modules and find out who the maintainer of the most relevant module is. By adding that person to the CC list of your email, you ensure that they will notice your email right away.

Microsoft has hired hundreds of people to serve as liaison between customers who pay for tech support and the developers who write the code. There’s no way for you to break through that barrier and talk to an NTFS developer directly because Microsoft prefers it that way. The Linux kernel developers cannot afford and do not desire to have that level of bureaucracy in between them and the world.

[charcircuit]

>You can search the mailing list archive via the web page

Not all bugs are sent to a mailing list. From what I can tell it is reccomended that you email the maintainer directly. You can't search for those direct emails. Also I'm not sure that search even is for the place bugs are reported, nor am I confident that it would do a quality search instead of just grepping emails with no ranking.

>You track the issue by waiting for replies to your email.

If you did not make the initial report there isn't a way to get a notification when there is a reply to it.

>There’s no way for you to break through that barrier and talk to an NTFS developer directly

You can just email them. There is no barrier that prevents your email to them or prevent them from talking to you directly.

>The Linux kernel developers cannot afford

The Linux foundation made >240M in revenue last year. They can afford people to triage bugs.

[db48x]

Now you’re just making up things to worry about.

> If you did not make the initial report there isn't a way to get a notification when there is a reply to it.

Sure there is. Send an email and ask for a status update. Be polite about it, and ask for specific information. If you suspect that the work was done and it was committed, ask whose tree it is in. From there you can follow the commit as it is merged into trees owned by people higher and higher in the community, until Linus himself merges it into the next release.

>> There’s no way for you to break through that barrier and talk to an NTFS developer directly

> You can just email them. There is no barrier that prevents your email to them or prevent them from talking to you directly.

If you know who they are, sure. What are you going to do, go on linkedin and hope you get lucky?

> The Linux foundation made >240M in revenue last year. They can afford people to triage bugs.

The Linux Foundation does not run the development of the Linux kernel. They provide support services (like the kernel.org webpage where you can search the mailing lists), legal services, advertising, conferences, etc. The actual development of the kernel is done by volunteers, many of them paid to work on the kernel by their employer.

If you want bug triage or other support services, you should pay for it. Contact Red Hat or whoever and they’ll get you started.

[charcircuit]

>Sure there is. Send an email and ask for a status update.

This sucks compared to something like Github where you can just visit an issue or subscribe to it. People don't want to have to SEND AN EMAIL to see the status of something.

>The Linux Foundation does not run the development of the Linux kernel.

But it does fund some of its development.

[db48x]

>>> If you did not make the initial report there isn't a way to get a notification when there is a reply to it.

>> Sure there is. Send an email and ask for a status update. Be polite about it, and ask for specific information. If you suspect that the work was done and it was committed, ask whose tree it is in. From there you can follow the commit as it is merged into trees owned by people higher and higher in the community, until Linus himself merges it into the next release.

> This sucks compared to something like Github where you can just visit an issue or subscribe to it. People don't want to have to SEND AN EMAIL to see the status of something.

Which do you want? Notifications or to visit a website without bothering anybody? If you want a notification, then send an email or just subscribe to the list. You can have your email program or email server move all the email from the list to a folder, and mark everything not in the thread(s) you care about as read if you want, just so that you don’t have to waste your time looking at the emails you don’t care about. Or you could talk to a person. Is that really such an unthinkable action to take?

If you want to visit a website, then just visit the mailing list’s website (<https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/>). Every thread has a page there, such as <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-input/557f1553-4e85-4988-83e4-...>.

You can also mirror the content of the mailing list in several ways, such as by cloning a git repository or downloading mbox files, or by using an NNTP server. See <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-input/_/text/mirror/> for instructions. Feel free to wire that up to any type of automation you want. Make your pager go off any time anyone mentions your pet bug. Make it dim your lights, turn on the RGB LEDs and the projector, and play “Bad to the Bone” at the loudest possible volume when your bug is fixed. Have fun with it!

>> The Linux Foundation does not run the development of the Linux kernel.

> But it does fund some of its development.

All it does is pay people to work on the kernel, it doesn’t mandate how that is done or what gets done. If you want someone to hold your hand so that you don’t have to subscribe to a mailing list, there are several support companies that will happily take your money. Or if you think a lot of people want a bug tracker so that they don’t ever have to talk to another human being, maybe you should provide that service yourself.

[rcxdude]

All your suggestions are orders of magnitude more effort than 'click a button to get email notifications if someone comments on the issue'. That's what people are complaining about, not that it can't be in principle done if you duct tape enough things together yourself.

[db48x]

I disagree. Sending someone a quick email is not an order of magnitude harder; both are the work of seconds, maybe minutes if you have to find the right email or bug report first. But if you think that it is, maybe you should offer that service. Give people a website where they can click on a button on any email in the mailing list to subscribe to replies as if they had been CC’d in the email itself.

[charcircuit]

>If you want a notification, then send an email or just subscribe to the list. You can have your email program or email server move all the email from the list to a folder, and mark everything not in the thread(s) you care about as read if you want, just so that you don’t have to waste your time looking at the emails you don’t care about.

This overly complicated. I consider myself more technical than 99% of people and even I couldn't tell you how to do this. How do you except a normal person to be able to figure this out. Do you think your parents could figure this out if they encountered a kernel bug?

>Or if you think a lot of people want a bug tracker so that they don’t ever have to talk to another human being, maybe you should provide that service yourself.

There are plenty of source forges which offer this. Look at what KDE or freedesktop have done with hosting their own.

[db48x]

> This overly complicated. I consider myself more technical than 99% of people and even I couldn't tell you how to do this.

You don’t even know how to filter the email you get? That is extremely sad. And yes, my parents do know how to set up their own email filters. On the other hand they would probably call me or one of my brothers if they encountered a kernel bug; free family tech support beats troubleshooting any day of the week :P

> There are plenty of source forges which offer this. Look at what KDE or freedesktop have done with hosting their own.

That’s not what I meant. Most kernel developers have no interest in bug trackers, self–hosted or otherwise. If you think that there are enough people who do, you could act as an intermediary by running one yourself and charging for access.

[ArneBab]

Most email clients have powerful filtering options. And since this is the tool of the trade for kernel developers, they use this power. If you did work on a tool that used an email list as bugtracker, you’d likely have a well-working setup for that.

And when you have setup your email client, it beats github issues in time efficiency any day.