An interesting read when discussing what to do about our bugs...

Hans de Goede j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Sat Jan 19 18:47:00 UTC 2008


Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 07:34:57PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> nodata wrote:
>>> Am Samstag, den 19.01.2008, 13:10 -0500 schrieb seth vidal:
>>>> On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:08 +0100, nodata wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Apart from security bugs, I have never had a bug fixed in Ubuntu, ever.
>>>>> The tactic seems to be to wait until Debian fix it, or wait until Debian
>>>>> fix it and then ask you to upgrade to the next release.
>>>>>
>>>>> Fedora does a lot better, much better, but probably the most annoying
>>>>> aspect of using Fedora's bugzilla is the attitude of some of the
>>>>> maintainers (not all) and the "closing, report upstream" attitude.
>>>>>
>>>>> Closing a bug report with "report it upstream" is a let down. It's
>>>>> repetitive boring work that a computer should be doing.
>>>>>
>>>>> It takes a lot of effort to report a bug, and by this I mean that I know
>>>>> a *lot* of people who find a bug, and maybe a fix, but don't bug report
>>>>> it. They should be, but I can see why they don't.
>>>> Hmm, is that what the 'upstream' close reason is for? Normally, I close
>>>> things 'upstream' when I have checked a fix into the upstream code base.
>>>> Which seems pretty reasonable time to close it to me.
>>>>
>>>> -sv
>>>>
>>> I'm talking about closing the bug and telling the reporter to report
>>> upstream, i.e. "go away".
>>>
>> I agree that the above is bad.
>>
>> Sometimes (rarely) I do forward a bugreport upstream (using upstream's 
>> preferred bug tracking mechanism) and then kindly explain that I'm not 
>> intimate enough with the code to fix the issue at hand with a reasonable 
>> effort, point them to the upstream bug and add them to the CC there if 
>> possible. And then close with a resolution of upstream. Not very pretty, 
>> but honest and way better then letting bugs linger for months.
> 
> It is possible to link tickets between the Red Hat bugzilla and other
> BZ instances. At the bottom there is a 'External Bugzilla References'
> form - simply add the number of the associated upstream BZ ticket. 
> Rather than entering upstream and then closing the RH BZ ticket, I'd
> suggest using this linkage between BZ instances. Then when the upstream
> maintainer finds a fix, you still have a record of the fact that it
> needs to be pulled into Fedora. If you close the Fedora BZ, you'll
> never remember to pull in the fix from upstream.
> 

I know about the BZ link feature and I always use it when a bug is reported 
both upstream and in Fedora, but I've never ever seen any good come out of it, 
I would expect Fedora BZ to send out mails to those CC-ed on the Fedora bug 
when something happens in the upstream linked bug, maybe even add a comment 
when the upstream bug changes, but it does none of the above, so I wonder what 
is the added value of using the BZ link feature instead of just putting an url 
to upstream's ticket in a comment?

Regards,

Hans




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