Bug Importance Guidelines

Henrik Nilsen Omma henrik at ubuntu.com
Wed Jul 30 13:34:39 BST 2008


Jordan Mantha wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Brian Murray <brian at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>   
>> The current guidelines[0] for setting bug importance were written at at
>> time when there were not other ways, release targetting and milestones,
>> for identifying the importance of a bug to the distribution as a whole.
>> Subsequently, these guidelines use phrases like 'severe impact on a
>> small portion of Ubuntu users', 'moderate impact on a large portion of
>> Ubuntu users' and 'severe impact on a large portion of Ubuntu users'.
>> Since the release team is actively using milestones combined with
>> release targetting and measuring the quantity of users impacted is vague
>> and subjective - I believe that the importance of a bug should be
>> determined based on the impact for the package affected.
>>
>> This would change the definition of High and Critical and the following
>> is what I have in mind for new guidelines.
>>
>>  * '''High''': A bug which fulfills one of the following criteria:
>>  * is a reproducible crash report
>>  * affects the core functionality of the package
>>  * a problem with an essential hardware component (disk controller,
>>    laptop built-in wireless, video card, keyboard, mouse)
>>
>>  * '''Critical''': A bug which fulfills one of the following criteria:
>>  * causes a package fail to install or upgrade
>>  * causes a package to fail to build
>>  * causes a loss of data
>>  * causes a severe memory leak
>>  * makes the package unusable e.g. application fails to start or
>>    perform its primary function
>>
>> [0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance
>>     
>
> Has this gotten anywhere? I'd really like to see this proposal
> implemented. Did it get stalled somewhere?
I've added this as an agenda item to today's QA team meeting: 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Meetings

This change will potentially affect both development and QA and possible 
release management. All interested parties are encouraged to attend 
(#ubuntu-meeting 17.00 UTC).

Henrik




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