## page was renamed from BugForwardingWorkflow
= Bug Fowarding Workflow (discussion notes) =

== Summary ==

The spec aims to improve the workflow of forwarding a bug upstream. Today, a bug is forwarded by first searching the upstream bug tracker for an existing bug, and then, if no bug was found, file a new one. After that it's possible to to link the Ubuntu bug to the upstream bug. This is quite a lot of work, though, and it should be possible to simple mark the bug as being an upstream bug, and then have someone else handle the upstream linkage.

== Today's bug forwarding workflow ==

 * If a bug is upstream, we have to find it in the upstream system, and then tie it together.
 * Otherwise, file a new bug, and tie it together by hand.
 * All of this is done by hand, which takes a lot of time to cross-correlate.


== Problems with the current workflow ==

 * Bug triagers have to do things by hand.
 * Bug triagers become the single bottleneck for tracking bugs
 * Bug reporters aren't the point of contact for upstream bugs
 * Upstreams don't use Launchpad, and most of them don't want to


== Goals of upstream communication ==

 * Eliminate the middlemen
 * Encourage co-operation between projects
 * Work is offloaded to people who are best equipped to do it
 * Only forward bugs that aren't our fault
 * We should not be forwarding feature requests
 * Forward bugs that have potential to be resolved.  Activity.
 * Ubuntu developers file useful reports upstream
 * Don't reject bugs, just because they have nothing to do with packaging.

== Long-term solutions ==

 * Creating an easy form letter to mail upstream.
  * Create a bug tracker which is "E-mail to this address"
  * Developer can push bug filing upstream through LP.
 * Mark that something should go upstream, inside Launchpad
 * Convince everyone to use Launchpad, better than Sourceforge.
 * Distributed bug tracking network


== Short-term solutions ==
 * Reporting inside LP for which bugs haven't been filed upstream
 * Package to a bug tracker associations by UI: (When clicking "Upstream", offer links to type in a bug number, open a search in that BTS, or file a new bug in that BTS.)
 * Products should allow upstream to trivially add themselves as bug contact, with multiple bug contacts
 * Should be easy to tie a bug tracker (real or pseudo) to every product.  These can be e-mail or URLs or whatever.
 * Follow upstream duplicates to track real progress.