LucidBugTriagePolicy

Summary

This specification defines what the bug triage policy for Kubuntu Lucid and future versions is.

Rationale

Kubuntu tracked packages currently get too many bug reports compared to the number of people doing active bug triage. It is necessary to revise the policy of bug triage so that bug triage and bug management can be more efficient.

Scope and Use Cases

Use Cases

* Alex is a Kubuntu user. From time to time he reports bugs against KDE packages at launchpad.net, his reports get processed quickly and resolved in the upcoming Kubuntu release. Important issues get resolved more quickly. Alex is happy to contribute something to the FLOSS community and sleeps well at night.

* Richard is a developer. Richard wishes at any given time to be able to see what needs to be done to improve Kubuntu's packages. With a manageable list that tracks only packaging bugs and more serious upstream bugs he can easily see what needs to be done without wading through hundreds of low priority upstream bugs, and help to resolve these issues more quickly.

* Jonathan is a bug triager. Jonathan wishes not to have to maintain the drivers he wrote to interface his brain to the Launchpad API. With a bug policy that directs upstream bugs upstream, Jonathan is happy that he can more easily and efficiently prioritise and confirm the now-more-manageable amount of bugs in Launchpad.

* Stephan is an upstream developer. Stephan likes to be able to receive bug reports from users with issues. With bugs going straight to upstream, Stephan can deal with these issues in a more timely manner as well as engage with the user for more effective debugging. As a result, the quality of both upstream and Kubuntu increase.

New Policy

* Continue to track packaging issues, bugs/wishlist items for Kubuntu-maintained applications, and Kubuntu-specific wishlist items in Launchpad as usual.

* Only track upstream bugs of High or Critical severity, as well as Medium-severity bugs which would comply with SRU requirements.

Implementation

* Publicise policy change in various user venues, such as the Kubuntu and Ubuntu forums.

* Close all existing bugs with a severity of low or wishlist that are being tracked upstream.

* Create a nice list of pre-defined responses to aid with the above. They must not be overly polite to the degree where they sound robotic and canned. See Kubuntu/Bugs/Responses

* Create a list of pre-defined bug responses to deal with common bug reports in general, using the same guidelines as above.

* Do one last push to upstream currently non-upstreamed bugs, closing them if they do not fit the criteria mentioned in the policy.

* Investigate the status of the bugzilla launchpad plugin and convince KDE sysadmins to enable it so we can easily move bugs between KDE and Kubuntu bug trackers.

* The apport patch from kdelibs will be removed. C++ apps which are Kubuntu specific such as the new update notifier will need to have drkonqi turned off so Apport is used.


CategorySpec

Kubuntu/Specs/LucidBugTriagePolicy (last edited 2009-11-18 22:15:50 by 63)