[Bug 764414] Re: private master bugs are confusing and lead to more duplicate filings

[Karl Fogel]

+1 on @tafthorne's suggestion in comment#21 that there be a widget that
a maintainer can use to easily swap a private master bug with some
chosen public duplicate bug.  (Actually, nothing about this widget is
specifically about private vs public, but I'll talk about it in those
terms here, since this is the current driving use case.)

This widget could be accessible from both the private bug and any public
bug marked as a dup of the private bug.  Since private->public is a one-
to-many relationship here, in the private bug the widget would allow you
to select *which* public bug to make be the new master; all current
other dups pointing to the private bug could even then be changed to
point to the public bug as their new master as well.  From the public
bug, it could just be a button whose effect is: "Make me the master,
thus stealing masterdom from the private bug I'm currently marked as a
duplicate of."

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/764414

Title:
  private master bugs are confusing and lead to more duplicate filings

Status in apport package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apport

  Apport currently tracks the master bug as a private bug visible only
  to Ubuntu developers (bugcontrol) and makes duplicate bugs public
  after stripping their data.

  This works well but has some downsides:
   - Launchpad cannot show the master bug to folk reporting bugs via apport (so they file new bugs always)
   - After users file a new bug apport detects its a duplicate and then they cannot see the master bug and get frustrated.

  It would be nice to have:
   - the master bug be public so that reporters of dups can see it in the dupe finder and can see if a dupe is detected post-filing.
   - Developers still have easy access to the raw crash data.
    - One way to do that that does not need much development would be to have a private bug exist, linked from the master bug (e.g. with a comment or in the description; something like 'Confidential crashdump for this bug is attached to bug 12345 - only visible to Ubuntu developers').

  One way to achieve this is to have apport file a new public bug to be
  the master. This would have the necessary metadata and would include
  the link to the private bug + gather all the duplicates to itself. One
  downside is that Apport would appear to be the bug reporter for all
  crashdump based bug reports. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but
  it may confuse people.

  Another way would be to have apport file a new private bug, move the
  attachments over from the original bug, add explanation and metadata
  in the description, subscribe bugcontrol and then sanitise the
  original bug report the same way it sanitises public bugs today. This
  would make the original bug be the public master, preserving the date
  of filing and the reporter. OTOH large files would need to be shuffled
  around and this might be unreliable.

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