Canonical Kernel Team Bug Day

With such a large volume of bugs against the kernel, it makes sense to try and tackle bugs which may already have presented a fix. As a result, the focus of today's bug day will be bugs with patches attached. The goal will be to fix as many bugs as possible! The following sections will help document how each of these bugs should be handled.

Bugs With Patches

1. Confirm the bug does indeed has a patch attached
   • The list of attachments can be found under the "Bug attachments" area on the right hand side of every bug report. If an attachment was flagged as being a patch but is not actually a patch, please unflag the attachment as being a patch. This can be done by clicking on the "(edit)" link next to the attachment and un-checking the "This attachment is a patch" box. (See Stock Reply)
2. Evaluate if the patch is upstream or already in the latest Ubuntu kernel.
   1. If the patch is not upstream, inquire why (see Standard Reply)
   2. If the patch is upstream but not in the Ubuntu development kernel (ie Lucid), post a comment that we will get the patch upon the next rebase with upstream. (see Standard Reply)

      • If the patch is for SRU (Stable Release Update), post a comment if this will or won't be considered for SRU. Be sure you've read up on our SRU Policy.

   3. If the patch is already available in a released Ubuntu kernel mark the bug Fix Released. (See Standard Reply)

Tools

Here are references to some useful tools that may help you more efficiently process the list of bugs.

greasemonkey

https://launchpad.net/launchpad-gm-scripts

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~gm-dev-launchpad/launchpad-gm-scripts/master/files

This is a collection of greasemonkey scripts which Launchpad users and Ubuntu developers have found useful. For the purpose of Bug Day's, the stockreplies gm-script will be the most useful. The stockreplies script allows you to save custom comments to insert into bug reports and additionally set the status and importance of a bug at the same time.

launchpadlib

https://help.launchpad.net/API/launchpadlib

The launchpadlib library depends on wadllib, another open-source library released by the Launchpad team. Get a copy of the launchpadlib and wadllib source with bzr and install it.

•   $ bzr branch lp:wadllib
    $ cd wadllib
    $ sudo ./setup.py install

Then do the same for launchpadlib.

•   $ bzr branch lp:launchpadlib
    $ cd launchpadlib
    $ sudo ./setup.py install

After installation you can write custom scripts to manipulate bug reports. This is useful for dealing with a list of bugs which all require the same type of actions/comment. For example, here is a stock-reply.py script which reads a list of bugs from a "stock.txt" file, posts a standard comment to each bug, transitions the status to Incomplete, and subscribes oneself to the bug report. It's quicker to use a launchpadlib script for this rather than having to do a page load per bug in order to use the greasemonkey stockreplies.

Standard Replies

Here's some common standard replies that may be used as a comment to a bug:

Attachment is not a Patch

Looking at the attachments in this bug report, I noticed that <insert Attachment filename> was flagged as a patch.  A patch contains changes to the code base that will resolve a bug.  Since the noted attachment does not appear to be a patch, I've unchecked the patch flag for it.  In the future keep in mind the definition of a patch.  You can learn more about what qualifies as a patch at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Patches.  Thanks!

Patch not Upstream

The patch noted in <insert Attachment filename> does not appear to be upstream.  It creates a significant amount of extra work for the Ubuntu kernel team to maintain out of tree patches.  As a result they typically require patches to be submitted and accepted upstream first.  Do you know if the patch referenced here has gone upstream?   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelPatches has been written to document the suggested policy and procedures for helping get a patch merged upstream and subsequently into the Ubuntu kernel.  Please take the time to review that wiki if this patch should be considered for inclusion.  Let us know if you have any questions or need any help via the Ubuntu Kernel Team mailing list.  Thanks in advance.

• Set status to Incomplete

Patch Upstream but not in Ubuntu (Lucid Kernel)

It appears the patch noted in <insert Attachment filename> is already upstream.  Subsequently, we should get the patch upon the next rebase with upstream.  Thanks.

• Set status to In Progress
• Set Importance (if not already set)
• Assign bug to canonical-kernel-team

Patch is Already Released

It looks like the patch noted in <insert Attachment filename> to resolve this issue has already been included and released in <insert release>.  As a result I'm marking this bug Fix Released.  Thanks.

• Set status to Fix Released

Bugs

Please refer to the following for the list of bugs to focus on for this bug day:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bugs?field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.has_patch=on

Stats of today's bugday can be seen at:

http://qa.ubuntu.com/reports/ogasawara/kernel-bugday/20091222.html