Bug Triage processes need some improvement and automation (Bug triage activity summary)...

[Brian Murray]

On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 06:06:28PM -0500, AG Restringere wrote:
> @ Brian Murray, I've shelved and retracted the previous proposal after some
> discussion on the Bug-Squad mailing list.  The process I was proposing was
> simply diametrically opposed to the current Bug Squad/Control processes and
> would not actually work as intended in actual application. However I did
> "drill down" to the problem that I had and it turned out to be a problem
> with what kind of data is displayed on actual bug reports in Launchpad and
> making that data more searchable.  It's not a process problem, it's a data
> display and search issue.
> 
> 
> > What types of bugs did you have difficultly searching for?
> 
> 
> Yes, Launchpad has loads of detailed search items available but the problem
> with looking at bugs about to expire is that these are bugs that I should
> NOT be looking at, it's better to let them expire like you said.  True I
> could see if they are Incomplete but that would mean that Bug Triage has
> already done their job and is just waiting for the Reporter. The bugs I
> want to find are ones with multiple Reporters are Confirmed and fresh but
> aren't getting any attention from Bug Triage or not enough attention. This
> the area where I could really jump in a "pick up the slack".

When looking at a list of bugs about a package (or a project) at a url
like this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bugs

There is a gear icon that allows you to change what information is
displayed in the bug list.  A useful attribute to have there is "Date
last updated".  Once it is there you click on it to sort by the date
last updated.  I think you could do a search for Confirmed bugs then
sort by date last updated with the least recently updated ones at the
top and find a good approximation of what you want.

> There doesn't seem to be a way to search for bugs that have low "bug
> triage" activity because Launchpad just records everyone's activity and
> only reports generic information.  That is activity from Reporters,
> Developers, Packagers and Bug Control/Squad members, everyone, but it
> doesn't separate out or filter just activity from Bug Control/Squad.

This makes an assumption that activity from people who are not in the
Ubuntu Bug Squad or Ubuntu Bug Control is less valuable, which is not
the case.  There are plenty of developers of other distributions and
upstream projects who are not members of either team.  Frequently, we
(Ubuntu Developers) see patches for bugs from new Launchpad users.

One thing I personally use is a Firefox Greasemonkey script that marks
up bug comments with team membership information for bug commenters,
using this allows me to quickly scan a bug's contents for the comments I
may want to read first.  Here's a screenshot:

http://www.murraytwins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/lp-gm-script.png

We can see that Bryce is a developer and member of Ubuntu Bug Control.

Another script that I use displays the date the bug was last updated at
the top of the bug report.  So it now says:

Reported by Bob on 2010-05-15 and last updated on 2013-11-07

It's not perfect but it helps my work flow.

--
Brian Murray
Ubuntu Bug Master