[Ubuntu-phone] Policy: filing bugs against Ubuntu packages instead of upstream projects

[Ursula Junque]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Thomi Richards <
thomi.richards at canonical.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 4:07 AM, Ursula Junque <ursinha at ursinha.net>wrote:
>
>> Is there a tool we could use to transition upstream bugs to distro bugs,
>>> then? I'm all for having a single bug list - at least until there's other
>>> consumers of a project than Ubuntu.
>>
>>
>> Not that I'm aware of but I think this can be quickly crafted.
>>
>
>
> Yes please :)
>
> Perhaps the things I work on are unusual, but I'd guess that 90% of all
> the bugs filed against autopilot are filed against the upstream project,
> and we've grown accustomed to looking there for bug reports.
>
> I concede the point about the fact that people dogfooding Ubuntu Touch
> should file bugs against the distro, I'm just not sure how to reconcile
> that with the fact that most of our users file bugs against the upstream
> projects, and our developers are trained to work with upstream bugs rather
> than distro ones.
>
> Your proposal makes sense, I have no trouble adopting it, I would love to
> get a more sane work flow than "now you have to look in two separate bug
> lists every day".
>
> Any hints?
>


There are three approaches I see:

1) We no longer report bugs on upstream projects, only Ubuntu packages
(with the exception of PPA packages).
Pros: One list of bugs to update/check. Cons: This might disrupt current
upstreams' workflows and be a problem for projects that are available on
other distros. Is this a real issue? Are there other problems than not
being able to find reported bugs?

2) We report bugs on Ubuntu packages and have a tool that automatically
creates upstreams bugtasks in the bugs.
Pros: One list of bugs to update/check (as all bugs would first be reported
against Ubuntu packages). Cons: I'm not sure the effort to keep things
synced pays off, it depends on the answer to the questions above.

3) We let everyone free, file bugs wherever they feel like it.
Cons: It's really hard to follow several policies across hundreds of
projects. We'd need to create an unified list of bugs (considering tons of
variables) so people won't let them fall into the cracks. Or
developers/QA/other related teams would need to check in all
upstreams/packages separately, which seems a nightmare and I fail to see a
reason to do this.

I see the mix of 1) and 2) as a nice approach. We ask people to file bugs
by default against Ubuntu packages, and if specific projects require
upstream tasks that can be automated. This would be the exception, not the
rule.

For the cases where people mistakenly filed bugs against upstream but they
belong to the distro package, we can "migrate" them to distro bugtasks, and
orient people to file bugs against the distro package next time. If the
upstream is "valid" only in Ubuntu we can automatically add a distro
bugtask. If not, we would need to monitor upstream bugs periodically to
guarantee we're not missing issues that might be in fact affecting the
distro package (even if the issue wasn't found in the distro).

What do you think?



> --
> Thomi Richards
> thomi.richards at canonical.com
>



-- 
Ursinha (Ursula Junque)
ursinha at ursinha.net
ursinha at ubuntu.com
--
Ubuntu - I am because we are
--
Linux user #289453 - Ubuntu user #31144
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