[RFC] Track Feature requests in Bundle Buggy?

[Aaron Bentley]

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Hi all,

Some people put feature requests in the bug tracker.  This has the
advantage that it prevents requests from being lost.  But it also has
disadvantages:

- - Launchpad shows bugs and feature requests all mixed together
- - Most feature requests are improved by community discussion, but
posting a feature request to Launchpad doesn't start discussion on the
mailing list
- - It is rude: a user posting a feature request as a bug is asserting
that Bazaar is broken because it doesn't meet their needs, and that the
only way to fix Bazaar is to implement the feature they ask for.

Since Bundle Buggy already tracks requests made to the mailing list, it
seems like it wouldn't be too hard to adjust it to track feature
requests as well.

This would involve:
1. adding a new view for feature requests
2. teaching it to treat messages with [FEATURE] in their subject as
feature requests
3. providing a web interface for adding feature requests, so that
non-subscribers have a convenient way to make feature requests.
4. data model updates.

Compared to launchpad, this would
1. Make feature requests always visible on the ML
2. Distinguish feature requests from bugs
3. Provide a link to the GMANE archive of feature discussion
4. Allow voting on features (not sure if this is a good thing)
5. Not provide a way of setting importance
6. Not provide a way of adding attachments
7. Not provide a convenient way of updating the text of a feature
request -- you'd need to make a new one that superseded the old one.

4-7 are things that we could fix if we wanted to.

Does this seem like a good approach?

Aaron
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