Ubuntu Wiki

Ubuntu Open Week - Managing Ubuntu bugs in Launchpad - - Thu, Oct 25, 2007

17:09 < BjornT> ok, let's get on with the next session then
17:09 < BjornT> i'm bjorn tillenius, the lead developer for the bug tracking part of Launchpad, and i'll be your host for this session about managing ubuntu bugs in launchpad.
17:10 < BjornT> so, first of all, what's this session going to be about?
17:10 < BjornT> some of you probably listened to the 'bug triage' session earlier this week, where brian and pedro explained how to triage bugs.
17:10 < BjornT> in this session we'll focus on how to actually use launchpad to triage and manage the bugs. that means that i will try to explain how launchpad works, rather explaining about a specific process.
17:10 < BjornT> for example, i might explain how to actually edit the status of a bug in the ui.
17:10 < BjornT> what the different rows in the 'Affects' table means.
17:11 < BjornT> how to deal with bugs that aren't ubuntu specific, and which already exists in another bug tracker.
17:11 -!- popey changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Ubuntu Open Week info: Information and Logs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek | Ubuntu classroom transcripts: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ClassroomTranscripts | Please ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat not here | Current Session: Managing Ubuntu bugs in Launchpad - Bjorn Tillenius
17:11 < BjornT> how to get an overview of bugs you are interested in.
17:11 < BjornT> and so on...
17:11 -!- mode/#ubuntu-classroom [+v BjornT] by popey
17:11 -!- mode/#ubuntu-classroom [-v mrevell] by popey
17:12 <+BjornT> popey: do i need +v to speak in this channel? i.e., didn't anyone see what i just wrote the last minute? :)
17:12 <@popey> no
17:12 < lardarse> we saw it
17:12 <@popey> but if we +z or +m the channel you will
17:12 <+BjornT> cool :)
17:12 <+BjornT> i haven't prepared this session that much actually, since there's so much to choose from. it's hard to know what you're interested in.  so, what i'll do is to start explaining about various things, but also monitor #ubuntu-classroom-chat for any question.
17:13 <+BjornT> don't be afraid to ask questions. i will stop now and then to answer them. that way you can tell me what you want me to talk about.
17:13 <+BjornT> so, let's start to look at the bug page, and see how to do various things.
17:14 <+BjornT> for example, let's look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/27014
17:14 <+BjornT> that is a bug that has already been triaged, but it serves as a good example
17:14 <+BjornT> btw, if you want to try things out, you can do so at https://staging.launchpad.net/
17:15 <+BjornT> staging contains a copy of our database, but it gets reset every day, so you can use it to experiment with. no e-mail notifications will be sent, or anything like that, so you won't annoy anyone with your edits.
17:17 <+BjornT> let's start with the pencil icon next to the "Bug description" (there's also "Edit description/tags" in the menu to the left)
17:17 <+BjornT> that takes you to an important page, where you can improve the summary and description of a bug.
17:18 <+BjornT> this bug already has a resonable good summary and description, but if you look at it, you can see that it has quite a lot of comments.
17:18 <+BjornT> often a lot of useful information get hidden inside the comments.
17:19 <+BjornT> that might make it hard for someone else to see what the bug is actually is about, especially when looking in the bug listings, where only the summary is visible
17:20 <+BjornT> so, if there is a discussion going on in the bug, it's useful to add the result of the discussion to either the summary or description.
17:20 <+BjornT> since we're already on that page, i should mentioned something about tags as well, which can can edit on the same page.
17:21 <+BjornT> tags are used to group bugs together in an ad-hoc way.
17:21 <+BjornT> a tag is a free-form text string, so it could be anything
17:22 <+BjornT> however, it's mostly useful when more than one person is using the same tag, so it's good to find out what tags are supposed to be used.
17:22 <+BjornT> for ubuntu, there's a list of tags at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Tags
17:23 <+BjornT> let's break for a question.
17:23 <+BjornT> < lardarse> QUESTION: For those of us who weren't here at the other session, what does triaging a bug mean?
17:24 <+BjornT> triaging a bug basically means deciding which priority a bug should have.
17:25 <+BjornT> in order to triage a bug, it's important to have as much information as possible, though, so a vital step in the triaging process is to gather information from the bug reporter, and ensure the bug report has all the information necessary to decide what's wrong, and how to fix it.
17:27 <+BjornT> gathering information from the bug reporter is important, and it's someone anyone can do. if you're interesting in trying it out, you should get in contact with the ubuntu bugsquad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad
17:27 <+BjornT> let's get back to the bug page again.
17:28 <+BjornT> when triaging a bug you often have to edit the status, change the package, and so on.
17:28 <+BjornT> it's not entirely obvious how to do this, though.
17:29 <+BjornT> if you look at the bug page there are two rows in the 'Affects' table, 'Evolution' and 'evolution (Ubuntu)'
17:29 <+BjornT> when a bug first comes in as a bug report in Ubuntu, it usually has only the latter one, and that's the one you should edit.
17:30 <+BjornT> you'll probably see that if you click on 'evolution (Ubuntu)', it will take you to all the open bugs reported against the evolution package in ubuntu
17:31 <+BjornT> however, you'll also see that there are three 'eject' buttons, two of them are next to the Status and Importance
17:31 <+BjornT> if you click on any of them, a new edit screen will be visible
17:32 <+BjornT> there you can change the package; set the status and importance, as well as setting the assignee.
17:33 <+BjornT> you'll see that there are several different options for the status. i'm not going to explain what they mean now.
17:33 <+BjornT> if you're interested i'd suggest reading what kiko wrote aobut bug statuses: http://news.launchpad.net/general/of-bugs-and-statuses
17:34 <+BjornT> as well as talking with the ubuntu bug squad. they have documentation of how the different statuses should be used for ubuntu
17:35 <+BjornT> if you look at the "Importance" field in the same edit screen, most of you will see a pencil that is crossed out, and you can't change it.
17:36 <+BjornT> this is because the importance is used to prioritize the work of the developers, so they don't want just anyone being able to change it, since it can easily be misused.
17:37 <+BjornT> for ubuntu, you'll have to be a member of the ubuntu-bugcontrol team. you can become a member of that team after being a member of the ubuntu-bugsquad team, showing that you can triage bugs reasonable well.
17:38 <+BjornT> so, let's get back to the bug page and take a closer look at the 'Affects' table
17:38 <+BjornT> as i said before, there are two rows, one for 'Evolution' and one for 'evolution (Ubuntu)'
17:39 <+BjornT> this means that the same bug is in two places; the ubuntu package, and the upstream project (Evolution)
17:40 <+BjornT> it's often like this for ubuntu packages. bugs usually get fixed in upstream Evolution, and then the next version of the package will automatically have the fix.
17:40 <+BjornT> in launchpad we track the status of the bug in both locations.
17:41 <+BjornT> the reason for this is that even though the bug gets fixed in upstream Evolution, the bug still exists in the ubuntu package.
17:42 <+BjornT> the new version of Evolution needs to be packaged and uploaded, before it's considered fixed in ubuntu.
17:42 <+BjornT> a quick question before moving on
17:42 <+BjornT> < camrdale> QUESTION: how do I get the Importance changed if I'm not a member of a bugsqad team, is there somewhere to contact?
17:43 <+BjornT> to clarify, you have to be a member of the ubuntu-bugcontrol team to change the importance.
17:44 <+BjornT> and if you want to change the importance without being a member, you should contact them. if you do that a few times, they will probably let you join.
17:44 <+BjornT> the ubuntu-bugcontrol team can usually be found in #ubuntu-bugs here at freenode
17:45 <+BjornT> let's continue talking the same bug being in multiple places
17:45 <+BjornT> *talking about*
17:47 <+BjornT> it's important to link ubuntu bugs to existing upstream bugs, since that tells the developers that they don't have to do much about it. they can basically ignore the bug, until it gets fixed by someone else.
17:48 <+BjornT> the bug can not only be linked to upstream projects like Evolution. it can also be linked to other packages, for example the evolution package in debian
17:49 <+BjornT> linking to debian is usually a good thing to do, since many packaging bugs are fixed by debian, and can be synced from there.
17:50 <+BjornT> let's talk a bit about how to link the ubuntu bug to another bug.
17:51 <+BjornT> to do that, let's take a look at this bug instead: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/157060
17:51 <+BjornT> now, this bug hasn't been triaged yet, so i'm not saying that it should be linked to another bug, but it serves as a good example, since it's not linked.
17:52 <+BjornT> to say that a bug exists in another place, you use the "Also affects:" links
17:52 <+BjornT> you can choose to either add a project, or a distribution
17:53 <+BjornT> a distribution are things like Debian, which has packages, and project is everything else. a general rule is that if you want to link to Debian, use "Distribution", otherwise use "Project"
17:54 <+BjornT> if we click on "Project", it takes us to another page
17:55 <+BjornT> there we can see that the project is "Evolution", which is correct (if it's wrong, we can change it, but it's usually correct)
17:56 <+BjornT> there's also possible to enter the url of the other bug report
17:57 <+BjornT> ideally, you should search the bug tracker Evolution uses (you can see that it uses the Gnome Bug Tracker to track its bugs), and enter the URL of the relevant bug report here.
17:57 <+BjornT> that allows Launchpad to check the status of the other bug, and display this in Launchpad, so it's easier to keep track of it.
17:58 <+BjornT> one obvious question is of course, what to do if you can't find any existing bug report about the same problem.
17:58 <+BjornT> well, there are two things you can do here.
18:00 <+BjornT> the first thing is to simply leave out the URL. even though this is not as helpful as having a URL, it still tells people that the bug is not ubuntu specific, and it should be linked to another bug.
18:01 <+BjornT> by saying that the bug exists in upstream Evolution, but not linking to an actual bug report, allows someone else to see that this bug needs to be linked, and find, alternatively file a new bug report.
18:01 <+BjornT> for example, if you look at https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/evolution
18:01 <+BjornT> there you can see a link to "24 bugs need forwarding upstream"
18:02 <+BjornT> they are the bugs that someone should link to other bug reports
18:02 <+BjornT> we're starting to run out of time, so let's take another question before it's too late
18:03 <+BjornT> QUESTION: Shouldn't (almost) all bugs be linked to Debian, since Ubuntu syncs with Debian for every release?
18:04 <+BjornT> yes, this is true. however, sometimes it can be more work than it's worth, since there are a lot of bugs that'd need to be linked.
18:04 <+BjornT> if you're able to find the corresponding debian bug easily, though, then you should link it, i think.
18:05 <+BjornT> there is also work going on to make this much easier.
18:05 <+BjornT> ok, i should talk briefly about the second option for what to do when you can't find the bug in another bug tracker
18:06 <+BjornT> the answer is to file a new bug in the other bug tracker, since it probably hasn't been reported there yet.
18:06 <+BjornT> however, i should note that this is something that you should be a bit careful about.
18:07 <+BjornT> the relationship between ubuntu and upstream is important, so the one filing bugs in the bug tracker should ideally have a good relationship with the upstream project.
18:07 <+BjornT> so you should talk to the bugsquad before doing this.
18:07 <+BjornT> ok, that was everythin we had time for. thanks for listening!
18:08 < samgee> thanks BjornT
18:08  * mwhudson clears his throat
18:09 <+BjornT> oh, and if you have any questions, you can talk to us in #launchpad