bugzilla triage madness :-/

Michael Schwendt mschwendt at gmail.com
Tue Apr 8 06:52:38 UTC 2008


On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:23:28 -0700, John Poelstra wrote:

> Pekka Savola said the following on 04/04/2008 11:07 AM Pacific Time:
>  > On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  >> What do I care? When I filed the bug, the product was fresh and
>  >> maintained,
>  >> wasn't it? But more than a year later I'm no longer willing to spend 
> time
>  >> on the same issues without a single sign of life from the package owner.
> 
> I think this is completely reasonable.  I'd do the same thing and would 
> thus close the bug.

The message sais the tickets will be closed automatically after 30 days.
That is 30 days for the maintainer to take a last look and see whether the
issue is fixed or not.

> 2) Is it reasonable for a bug reporter or a maintainer to expect that 
> EVERY legitimate bug filed will be fixed?
>     --If not, how does Fedora as project adjust bug reporter expectations?
>     --Could Fedora provide guidelines around which types of bug reports 
> are more desirable than others--assuming bug reporters have finite time 
> as well?

Handle incoming reports like hot potatoes. You can expect more
collaboration from a reporter while an issue is current. Give the reporter
feedback faster. Tell the reporter sooner that a ticket won't be looked at
due to resource constraints. Don't wait a year and pretend that NOW
there's time to take a look at the same issue if it were confirmed once
more. Don't keep tickets open if you rather want to close them CANTFIX or
WONTFIX due to lack of time, lack of expertise or lack of interest. Try to
point reporters to upstream bug trackers (with full URL) if there's
absolutely no time to forward reports.

And for packages where there is not enough time to even process all
incoming reports, automation may be used to help with the high number of
tickets that cannot be looked at by a human. However, metrics must confirm
that a package or package maintainer is overloaded.

> 3) With finite resources is it wiser to attempt to fix all the bugs in 
> Fedora Core 1 to 6 or polish Fedora 9?
>     --The EOL releases have definitely been a distraction and potential 
> time waster for new triagers

You try to influence the answer to that question. Without evaluating a bug
report you can never know whether a bug in Fedora 6 doesn't also affect
Fedora 9. Similarly, a bug reported against Fedora 1 may still affect
Fedora 9 if it is kept in NEW for unknown reasons for a very long time.
And of course, a bug reported against Fedora 8 may still affect Fedora 10
if it is ignored again for unknown reasons.

> 4) Is it actually a *better* user experience to routinely close open 
> bugs that aren't getting fixed then let them sit for several years with 
> no response?  In other words is it better to disappoint someone a month 
> or two after reporting a bug or a year?

Don't wait a year.




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