The Big Desktop Bug Scrub

Ahead of the 16.04 LTS release we want to get the Unity, Compiz and Nux bug list in as good a shape as we can. To do this we will follow the process laid out below, and we need your help. For more background please read this blog post.

Please note: Right now we haven't run the scripts to automatically close bugs relating to unsupported versions of Ubuntu. Until this is done you may find more invalid or unreproducible bugs than normal

How You Can Help

1. Make sure you have registered for a Launchpad account.

2. If you are not already running the latest version of Ubuntu, consider creating a virtual machine running 15.10 to test the bugs on. Why 15.10? It's possible that a bug has been fixed in upstream Unity but not backported to earlier releases. At 16.04 LTS all these bugs fixes (and new features) will be included, so it would be useful to know if an existing fix that will be in 16.04 LTS but not, say, 15.04 applies to this bug.
3. Choose a bug from one of these lists:

   1. Unity 7 Bugs

   2. Compiz Bugs

   3. Nux Bugs

4. Can you recreate that bug? If there is a description explaining how to recreate the bug follow those steps, if not try to work out what to do and add a comment with your own description. If you can't work out what to do just leave that bug as it is and try a different one. Once you have tried to recreate the bug there are a few potential scenarios:

   • You can't work out from the description what to do to recreate the bug.

     • Add a comment along the lines of: “Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. Unfortunately, we can’t work out how to recreate this bug from your description. Please describe the process you go through to trigger this bug and then change the bug status to NEW. See this page for more information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BigDesktopBugScrub

     • Set the bug status to Incomplete. If you don't have permission to change the status to incomplete, please add a tag "desktop-bugscrub-incomplete" and we can have a robot make the change.

   • This bug appears to be fixed now.

     • Add a comment along the lines of: “Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. We have tried to recreate this on the latest release of Ubuntu, but cannot reproduce it. This bug is being marked as Invalid. If you believe the problem to still exist in the latest version of Ubuntu, please comment on why that is the case and change the bug status to NEW.”

     • Set the bug status to Invalid

   • This bug still appears to be a problem.

     • Add a comment along the lines of: “As part of the big bug review for 16.04 LTS, I have tested this on 15.10 and the bug is still there.”

     • Set the bug status to Triaged or, if you don’t have permission to do that, add the tag “desktop-bugscrub-triaged”

   • This is not really a bug. Perhaps a feature request.

     • Add a comment along the lines of: “As part of the big bug review for 16.04 LTS, I have tested this on 15.10 and the bug is still there. I think this is a feature request rather than a bug.”

     • Set the bug status to Opinion, or, if you don’t have permission to do that, add the tag “desktop-bugscrub-opinion”

5. Thank you, we're one bug closer to the best Desktop ever!
6. Take another bug from the list and start this process again.

Hey! Someone says a bug I reported couldn't be reproduced but it can be

If you have previously reported a bug and someone has tried and failed to reproduce it then you need to provide a bit more information.

Please detail the following information:

• Which version of Ubuntu you are running, if that information isn't already present.
• The exact steps you can take from logging in to demonstrate this bug detailed step by step.
• Any debugging you have already tried.
• If possible a video or screenshot of the bug. This would be very useful.

Bug Squash Hours Schedule

We will be organising some time for Unity developers to be available on IRC to answer your questions and help you with the triaging. The exact schedule will be published here as soon as possible.

Suggested Wording For Closing Bugs

• For closing 'Apport Bugs':

  • As part of the big bug clear up for 16.04 LTS, I am marking this bug as Wont Fix. These types of crashes are better handled by errors.ubuntu.com, which can collate similar crash reports to help us identify persistent bugs rather than one-off crashes. Sorry we are not able to help with this specific issue. If you are still experiencing this crash, please re-open the bug and add the tag “desktop-bugscrub-reopened”. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BigDesktopBugScrub for more information.

  • Mark as 'Wont Fix'
• For closing bugs which affect unsupported releases:
  • Sorry folks, but, as part of the bug clean up ahead of 16.04 LTS, I'm marking this as invalid because it affects an Ubuntu release which is now unsupported. If you can still recreate this bug in a supported release, please do open a new bug and we can triage it for consideration in the 16.04 LTS development cycle.
  • Mark as Invalid or tag as "desktop-bugscrub-invalid"
• For closing a bug which is a feature request
  • Core Unity developers will not be adding any new features to Unity 7 at this stage.
  • As part of the big bug clear up for 16.04 LTS, this bug is being marked as Opinion. While this bug is affecting you, and potentially others, we are not considering working on it so it won't get fixed by us. Other developers are free to pick this up and work on it. Sorry that we can't offer you help at this time.
  • Mark as Opinion, or, if you don't have rights, add the tag "desktop-bugscrub-opinion"
• For closing a bug which will not get worked on by Core developers
  • Example: An edge case bug which doesn't have enough impact to be considered for fixing
  • As part of the big bug clear up for 16.04 LTS, we have reviewed this bug and we will not be working on it in the near future. Sorry we can't offer you a fix. We will, of course, review patches if anyone submits them. Please stop by IRC to discuss this option.
  • Mark as Wont Fix or add the tag "desktop-bugscrub-wontfix"
• Where a bug hasn't seen any activity (comments) for a long time (a long time is still to be defined)
  • As part of the bug clean up for 16.04 LTS, this bug has been reviewed by a script and found to have had no activity for the past N days. Please could you comment on whether this bug is still affecting you or not? If not, then there is no need to take any action and the bug will automatically expire. If it is still a problem, please comment on which version of Ubuntu you are now running, remove the tag 'desktop-bugscrub-autoincomplete' and replace it with 'desktop-bugscrub-reopened'.
  • Mark the bug as Incomplete or add the tag "desktop-bugscrub-incomplete"

Bugs that will be automatically closed

Compiz

Since, there were hundreds of old, invalid and expired bugs reported under the Compiz project on Launchpad, the desktop team recently decided to close a few of them and prioritize the others. Therefore we decided to close the bugs that:

• were reported before the 4th July 2010, when the C++ re-write of Compiz was announced. These bugs, refer to the original C Compiz that was used until the Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, which is not supported anymore. All recent Ubuntu releases use the C++ Compiz right now,
• are random apport crashes and more than 2 years old,
• concern 3rd party Compiz plugins that are not used by default on any of the supported desktop environments (unity, mate etc), are not related to the compiz cube and don’t introduce accessibility features,
• refer to Metacity and/or other window managers that aren’t part of any of the supported Ubuntu DEs by default.

This way, we hope to reduce the number of old and invalid bugs and focus our work on those that are really important and affect the most Ubuntu users in order to improve the desktop experience.