Bug status clarifications requested

[Brian Murray]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 12:51:57PM -0500, Mathias Gug wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 12:21:30PM -0500, Paul Dufresne wrote:
> > Often while triaging bugs, I come on bugs that were reported on old
> > versions, but seems to be fixed in current or development version.
> > That said, most of the time I have no idea exactly when, or where it
> > has been fixed. I use to mark them Invalid in this case, because I
> > take that 'Fix release' should only be use by a developer to mark that
> > his patch not only have been committed, but released.
> > 
> > But then reading
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses#head-246b9a0b2091d7aee70afd2b0579dbbc986eb51b
> > I begin to seriously think I should mark them 'Fix released'.
> > 
> 
> Yes. If the bug has been solved in the current development release, it
> should be marked as Fix Released. If the bug is serious enough to
> consider a Stable Release Update, it should be nominated for the
> corresponding release.

I agree with Mathias here.  Consider the case where an Ubuntu user is
searching for a bug about a particular package and he finds a bug report
that is Invalid but it is really fixed.  This status does not accurately 
reflect the current status of the software package and that bug.  That
being said in the event there is not enough information to confirm that a 
bug really exists and it becomes magically fixed - those bug reports 
should be invalidated.

> > An other less common situation I wonder if I should use 'Fix released'
> > or not is in:
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php5/+bug/21995
> > Here the bug have been fix in Debian, but the version in Hardy is not
> > yet the same as the fix one in Debian.
> > 
> 
> Confirmed is a good action. May be 'Fix Committed' could also be used ?

I think 'Fix Committed' is appropriate in this particular case.  'Fix
Released' should not be used as the fix is not available to Ubuntu users
and they reported the bug about the Ubuntu version of the package.
 
> > Last, I often confirm bugs that I am not sure it is a bug because I
> > have not enough knowledge of the package, but I am pretty sure the
> > package maintainer would have no problem with the information given up
> > to now. I just hope it is right to do so.
> > 
> 
> Yes.  A Developer should set it back to Incomplete if it's not complete
> enough and Triager should keep working on the bug to get the relevant
> information. If the developer consider that the report is good enough,
> it should set the bug status to Triaged. 

With some bug reports you may not be able to reproduce the bug, but if
all the debugging information[0] has been gathered for that package then
the bug should be confirmed.
 
> > Also, I believe the package naming scheme is supposed to indicate if
> > the package is specific to Ubuntu, taken from Debian, taken from an
> > other project. But I don't easily find back where this is explained.
> > 
> 
> Right. You can find this information in
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment#UbuntuPackages. It should
> probably be added to the Packaging Guide (which is the first place where
> I looked at).
> 
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Lists/BugStatus (Rejected
> > should become Invalid here)

There were actually a couple of old bug statuses here and I have updated
that page.  However, it should be deprecated in favor of the Bugs/Status
page.

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures

Thanks for your thoughtful questions and feel free to ask any more you
might have.

Sincerely, 
-- 
Brian Murray                                                 @ubuntu.com
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