Proposing to adapt bug watch policies

[Bruno Girin]

On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 22:58 +0100, Sense Hofstede wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Forwarding upstream costs time and requires knowledge of the upstream
> bug tracker. It would be much easier if triagers could just mark a bug
> as needing forwarding upstream and don't have to interrupt their
> work-flow. This can already be done; Launchpad has got useful flags[1]
> you can use to find out what bugs have empty bug watches.
> 
> However, the documentation doesn't seem to talk about adding empty bug
> watches at all. I do think that this possibility is something that be
> very helpful to bug triagers and have therefore made it a part of the
> AdoptionTeam's structure[2].
> 
> Wouldn't it be good to (also) make this a part of the default bug
> triaging process? I'd suggest to modify the explanation for moving
> bugs to 'Confirmed'[3] to include adding an empty bug watch when the
> cause has been determined. This would allow people that know how to
> forward upstream to search for empty bug watches and fill those, also
> making the live of the forwarders in AdoptionTeams a lot easier.

I second this. I'm quite happy to forward bugs upstream but I find that
I spend more time finding out which bugs need to be forwarded rather
than actually doing the job.

> 
> Possible downside: this would increase clutter in the task lists and
> the projects for the upstream bug trackers on Launchpad since that
> would start gathering a lot more bug reports without an upstream link.

How much of a downside is it? If it means more bugs for the upstream
projects but a more efficient way to deal with them isn't that a side
effect worth having? At the end of the day, all those bugs should end up
with the upstream project at one point or another: the earlier they do,
they earlier they have a chance to get fixed.

Bruno