[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #8185: Tickets and ticket comments are not saved automatically

[Making WordPress.org]

#8185: Tickets and ticket comments are not saved automatically
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 Reporter:  chealer      |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:
Component:  Trac         |   Keywords:
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 Writing a ticket or replying to one often takes a lot of time. For
 instance, writing [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
 bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=677948 Debian ticket #677948] took hours. Much of
 that is research, but losing the text shortly before it is submitted can
 be costly.

 Good ITSs feature some form of autosaving, so that a mere browser crash
 does not require spending hours to recover. Even GitHub, a fighter-brand
 forge, somewhat supports autosaves. Unfortunately, I can see no sign of
 that here, either in Trac’s documentation or empirically. This website
 does not seem to automatically save even just the description when
 creating a ticket, nor the comment when modifying. I also lost a draft
 ticket I was reporting when Microsoft Windows helpfully took the
 initiative to reboot. I am therefore confident that this website does not
 save tickets and ticket comments automatically, most likely because the
 Trac version it uses does not do that by default.

 Assuming this is not a configuration issue or due to an outdated Trac
 version, this is caused by a missing Trac features tracked in
 [https://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/13891 ticket #13891].

 Ideally, autosaves would:
 1. cover all fields in all contexts:
   a. ticket fields when creating
   b. ticket fields and the comment when modifying
 2. save contents constantly on the client, and semi-regularly on the
 server.

 But I would happily consider a basic implementation saving textarea fields
 anywhere as a sufficient solution.

 ==== Solution
 Unfortunately, I dug into Trac’s ITS while filing the above ticket, which
 revealed it is in a pretty bad shape (see notably issues
 [https://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/13888 #13888],
 [https://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/13889 #13889] and
 [https://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/13892 #13892]). I would not expect a
 solution from upstream this decade.

 In fact, Trac’s situation looks so bad that I suggest considering
 switching to a different engine. Unfortunately, I don’t know any option as
 good as JetBrains YouTrack.

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 ''This report (including all comments and attachments I add to it) is
 offered under the terms of CC0 1.0 (unless otherwise noted).''

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/8185>
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