Package: bugs.debian.org

I was using the common idiom, documented here:

http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control#clone

There's no caveat about merged bugs, and even if this limitation was mentioned,
it's tedious to have to consider the history of the ticket when you just want
to assign a clone to another package.  So documenting this limitation would
certainly be an improvement, but doesn't see a good way to fix this issue.

Forcing an existing merged bug number to be reused here seems unhelpful -
external references to that bug number will now rather arbitrarily lead to a
bug in a different package.

It's especially annoying that any further commands get executed on the uncloned
bug number, meaning that these changes then need to be undone once you unmerge
the ticket.  I'd have been less annoyed by this if the clone failure had ended
processing.

Cheers,
    Olly

retitle 577487 document that clone does not work on merged bugs
severity 577487 minor
thanks

It doesn't make much sense to clone a merged bug, because the history
isn't currently properly copied anyway.

There is already an existing bug to rectify the issue of history
propogation.


Don Armstrong