CommonTasks

Revision 15 as of 2006-01-11 23:46:23

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Overview

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Forwarding bugs upstream

You can forward bugs to the authors of the software (upstream), if

  • you made sure that the bug doesn't occur because of Ubuntu related changes,
  • the change is too hard to be fixed by yourself or anyone else in the team.

If you do this, be sure to

  • include all the necessary information, such as
    • how to reproduce the bug
    • which version is used (which version of dependent libraries, if the bug indicates problems there)
    • who reported it
    • where the whole conversation can be found
  • create a bug watch in Malone for this

How to Deal with Feature Requests

If you feel that the bug reported is a feature request disguised as a bug report, please introduce the reporter gently to the Specification Process we have. Be sure to mention the following specification resources; FeatureSpecifications, SpecSpec, ["SpecTemplate"] and http://launchpad.net/specs

How to deal with Support Requests

If you feel that the bug reported is a support request disguised as a bug report, please introduce the reporter gently to the Support Tracker we have. Be sure to mention http://launchpad.net/support

How to deal with suggestions for changing defaults

If you feel that the bug reported is a suggestions for changing defaults disguised as a bug report, please kindly reroute the discussion to an appropriate mailing list or a discussion forum. If this has already been discussed and rejected, explain the reasons to the user and direct them to the corresponding discussion for further suggestions/comments.

Finding Duplicates

Finding duplicates of bugs is a very valuable contribution in the Bug community. Users sometimes don't know how to check if the same bug has already been filed, and sometimes they don't care. Weeding out simple ME TOO messages and aggregating information in one place is crucial to the process of fixing a bug.

There are quite a few measures you can take to assist with this aspect, one way is to search for bugs filed for the same component, also try to rephrase your search, and concentrate on actions and words that describe the items involved to reproduce this crash.

Examples:

If you can't find it in the list of open bugs, you could try to find it in the list of closed ones. Don't feel discouraged, if you don't find duplicates fast in the beginning, after some time you will get to know the usual suspects, and learn how to more easily identify them.

Note: If you encounter a bug that has a terrible / unintelligible title, rephrase it, so people find it more easily.

Reminder of the Code of Conduct

Note that the Code of Conduct applies to conversations in bug reports too. So if you observe people being disrespectful, please direct them to http://www.ubuntulinux.org/community/conduct/document_view

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