Bugs without a package

[Brian Murray]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 01:32:45PM -0300, Pedro Villavicencio Garrido wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 16:17 +0000, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > A surprising number of bugs are still being filed without a package. I'd 
> > like to look at automated ways of dealing with this. It is a problem not 
> > just because it represents one more triaging step todo but because 
> > before a bug gets a package it escapes the attention of package 
> > maintainers and package teams like mozilla and desktop, leaving it for 
> > the triage teams alone to deal with.

Part of me thinks that this is actually a good starting point for new
triagers.  Assigning a bug to a package requires no commitment and it
exposes you to a lot of different kinds of issues.  Having a daily list 
of new bugs without a package might be a good starting point for new
triagers - but preventing the majority of these bugs would be best.

> > I suggest we ask LP to send out an email to someone who reports a bug 
> > against the distro to please set a package and include these links for 
> > guidance:
> > 
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage
> > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
> > 
> > The bug should also be set directly to Incomplete when this mail is sent 
> > out.

This sounds reasonable but still requires action on the reporters part -
it would be better to catch them as they are first filing the bug.  One 
way to do this is having the radio button for "I don't know" not be the 
default selection at the +filebug page.  Being more aggressive we could 
have it say "I didn't try to figure it out" - or something more tactful.

Additionally, I think the "Choose" dialog box for searching for a
package is not very helpful.  I'm sure there is a bug about it but I
don't recall it at the moment.  I think that search results would be
more useful if they were sorted by the packages with the most bugs or
something.

> > This will only work if we also have some category for bugs that really 
> > are filed correctly against the distro itself. We could do this with a 
> > tag, but I'd really like to see a place-holder package for it. That way 
> > if a bug has not package in can only ever be wrong.
> > 

I can't think of any bugs at this moment that should be filed against
the whole distribution.  Do you have an example in mind?

At the same time another thing to consider is that every 'needs-packaging' 
bug ends up being filed without a package which makes a certain amount
of sense.
 
> I like the idea of the email. The place holder of the package may
> contain some directions to the advanced form[1]? because otherwise i
> guess you don't have a way to fill a bug with a tag
> 
> 1- https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/+filebug-advanced

I had forgotten about this page.  It doesn't seem to show the Guided Bug
filing instructions which is probably a bug in Launchpad.
 
-- 
Brian Murray                                                 @ubuntu.com
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