Bug triage, or spam?

Tom Spear speeddymon at gmail.com
Fri Jun 1 08:57:41 CDT 2007


On 5/31/07, Jan Zerebecki <jan.wine at zerebecki.de> wrote:
> I'm not sure there is a agreement what some things here mean. The
> following is my understanding of things, please correct me or
> state differing understanding:
>
> triage bugs: Make sure the bug is properly filed, has enough
> information and possibly uncover the cause (e.g. regression
> testing, finding where a NULL that causes a crash inside the
> application comes from). This also includes marking a bug
> resolved,fixed or closed or whatever, but the prior thing is more
> important because it makes it easier to fix.

Agree

> resolved,fixed: I only mark bugs where I'm confident that they
> are really fixed as this. So if I need to ask the reporter or
> some user if it now works for them I do this before resolving it.
> I think I never "closed" a bug.

Agree

> To detect e.g. resolved bugs with new comments (e.g. requesting
> reopen) I run a query for changed bugs (where I made a comment)
> since last date up to which I queried this (I noted that down)
> and e.g. yesterday. Closing bugs doesn't help here either as they
> could be closed in error, so someone would still want to request
> those to be reopened.

True, bugs could be closed in error as well, which is why I don't
close a bug, unless I was working with the reporter, or it is over
(eg) 6 months since the last comment, and is already resolved.

> So is someone really using the "closed" status (not in the sense
> that they set it but e.g. use it in queries)?

No, but that was my point.  I search thru resolved bugs, to double
check that users are satisfied with the result, and it does me no good
to do that if I am searching thru bugs that are >6months old.  If it
is closed, a query for resolved bugs will not find those that are
closed

> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 05:36:45PM -0500, Tom Spear wrote:
> > So I was closing bugs that were
> > invalid/abandoned/dupe/worksforme so that they wouldnt show in the
> > lists of resolved bugs, so its less I have to sort thru....
>
> Does closed convey any more meaning than resolved as
> invalid/abandoned/dupe/worksforme? I mean who would mark a bug as
> resolved if that is not the conclusion and not reopen when that
> was done in error? So isn't closing perhaps something we _really_
> want to avoid doing too prematurely? Perhaps something we only do
> every major release ( like 0.9 ). Otherwise it looses it's
> meaning as "this is something we never ever need to look at".

See above, however you are onto something with the only closing stale
bugs at major releases..

According to James, the standard for marking a bug abandoned is 6
months from the request of more information without any response from
the reporter or someone else having the same issue, and also not
reproducible via a download.  Perhaps we could do something similar to
what Jonathan did before 0.9, say ping every bug at the 1.0 code
freeze, and then resolve AND close any with no response, or that the
reporter replied saying it is not an issue anymore..

With that in mind, once 1.0 goes live, will we still be doing monthly
stable 1.0x releases, or will the release cycle be more of any x.0x
releases are development and the stables will be x.x or x.5?  However
it is done, I think it would be a good idea to do pings of bugs prior
to any STABLE release, and during development release periods, just
ping when more than 6mos old like we currently are doing.


-- 
Thanks

Tom



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