Introduction

Welcome

Welcome to the highly frustrating yet satisfying world of Bug Triage for Mozilla Firefox. Before we go on, I would like to warn you about some of the dangers involved. Firefox is big and multi-threaded. When you throw in a flash player, a java virtual machine, and a couple of plug ins it gets bigger. The whole Firefox vs. Iceweasle issue will make you head spin.

Yet, Firefox is a very visible piece of Ubuntu. So, the significance of what you are doing is great. Helping fix a issue in Firefox is helping thousands of people.

Administration

I have set a couple of long term goals for Firefox triage.

1. Every 'unconfirmed' issue report should be acknowledged with in a few hours. In many cases a Firefox crash report is the first bug report that a new users files. Let's make it a positive experience.
2. Issue reports that have been sitting as 'need info' should be closed or followed up on after 30 days.
3. All 'confirmed' bugs should be classified as Ubuntu, Debian, or Mozilla based on where in the packaging processing they first appear. Debian and Mozilla issues should be pushed upstream as soon as possible. Ubuntu issues should be taken care of by an Ubuntu Developer

Versions

At any given point in time we will be triaging 3 versions of a package. Those found in an up to date Long Term Support (LTS), Current, and Current +1 release. These versions must be installed from the official Ubuntu repositories. If someone reports a bug from a third party repository politely refer them back to the repository maintainer for support.

1. LTS- We will fix all issues that have been rated Critical by QA. We will work with the various support channels to develop work a rounds for other issues as need.
2. Current - Same as LTS.
3. Current +1. We will attempt to fix all issues.

== Upstream == Notes

Our direct parent is Debian. Grandparents are

Common Issues

As a triager you will begin to see a number of reoccurring issues.

Crashes

New to the Edgy development Cycle is the apport crash reporting infrastructure. This infrastructure is currently undergoing rapid development so hold on tight. We'll talk in more detail about crash report later on. For now, let's just consider that most Firefox crashes are actually Flash, Java, or plugin related.

Mozilla Gtk Consistency

Firefox is written to be cross platform. The Mozilla developers have developed their own widget set to aid in this cross compatibility. Widgets are all the dialogs where Firefox communicates with the rest of the operating system. Such as file pickers, file save, set proxy.... For consistency with the rest of Ubuntu, these widgets have often been replaced with Gtk widgets by Debian and Ubuntu Developers.

Localization

Upstream Firefox is officially available in over 45 languages. That is a lot of different fonts and localized ubuntu help page to keep straight.

Branding

Upstream, Mozilla is struggling with how to protect the Firefox brand while being a flexible as possible to downstream distributions. This causes changing icon and product naming requirements.

Prepared Responses

As a triager you will often be asking the same types of questions. I have compiled a list of my frequently asked question at ["MozillaTeam/Bugs/Triage/Responses"]. It works pretty well to copy the generic responses to a Tomboy note and tweak them to better fit you personal style. Always try to include the reporters name and a personal sentence to each response. I like to click on the reporters name and check out their karma to get a feel from their experience with bug reporting.

Howto

Tackle this tomorrow