The 'close' command has been deprecated since at least February 2002 [0],
and its use is strongly discouraged by §5.8.2 of the developers
reference:

    You should never close bugs via the bug server close command sent to
    control@bugs.debian.org. If you do so, the original submitter will
    not receive any information about why the bug was closed. [1]

After almost 20 years of deprecation, maybe it's time to finally drop
it?

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20020202152705/http://www.debian.org:80/Bugs/server-control
[1] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.en.html#responding-to-bugs

If this gets implemented, how are housekeeping actions like [1] supposed
to be done?

How do you suggest to close bugs like #993125 on submission?

cu
Adrian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=984001;msg=15

Maybe it should be called "strongly discouraged" everywhere instead of
deprecated, but there are uses for this command, I don't think we should
drop it.

Cheers,
Julien

I suggest a new design for bug closing:

Make `bts done` and `bts close` both be able to do notified closings
and silent closings.

Add command-line options --notify and --silent to `bts done/close`,
make --notify the default for `bts done` and --silent for `bts close`.

Add config file options for each of `bts close/done` to let people
customise them independently as desired.

Change the template for notified closings to mail -done instead of
control@ and place a Version pseudo-header into the template even when
a version isn't specified.

Control: tag -1 wontfix

Heh; this is actually the first real use for close I've seen.

I'm personally not planning on removing it, but it should continue to be
deprecated in favor of -done for any use when you actually know the bug
number. [I know people have use the fact that the submitter isn't
notified on close as a "feature"...]

In the other example [1] (cleanup after a MBF) I did know the bug
numbers, but with -done I'd have to send 50 emails instead of 1 email.

The BTS does send an email to the submitter after 'close',
see [2] as an example.

The part of the developers reference quoted by Ryan is correct in
stating that 'close' does not contain any information about *why*
the bug was closed, but emails to -done can also be sent without
such information.

No disagreement that -done should stay the documented preferred method
for bug closing since it encourages providing a reason, but there are
also valid usecases for using 'close' or 'forcemerge' to close bugs.

cu
Adrian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=984001;msg=15
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983976;msg=15