Bugs

It is especially important that Bugs found in the development release be upstreamed so that their upstream authors can see them. Often we are using the latest, unmodified alpha code for various projects during the development release, so the odds of it being fixed are much greater if they can be reported to the upstream developers making the changes.

Installation Bugs

When testing the installer and you find an error that prevents the installation from completing, have a read of Install Bugs to work out what to report the issue against.

Reporting Bugs

Discussing a bug on IRC, email, forum or facebook areas etc. does not raise a bug. The devs do not monitor those areas. By all means use them to discuss a problem. Once your discussion about the bug is at a stage where you can report it, then for it to be actioned by the devs you must raise a bug.

My bug is marked Private

Some bug reports (usually those reported about a crash) contain many details of your system. These bug reports are only available to the apport system. The apport system contains a retracer, which will analyze the crash report and provide more details about the crash for developers. Once the retracer has finished retracing the crash, the core dump is deleted from the bug report. This can take a couple of days; in the meantime be patient. After the retracer has done its work, the bug team may still have to remove other personal information before making the bug report public. Your bug is not being ignored, but we do not want to reveal potentially sensitive information to the public.

My Bug became Private

It is more probable that it was not the bug you opened that became private, but that your bug was marked as a duplicate of another bug report that is private.

There are some bug bots that look for duplicate bugs and they do not worry if the bug being using as the master is private. If this happens please go to #ubuntu-bugs and raise it with the bugs team. Head over to why bugs are private for more information.

Dealing with Bug Reports

Triaging (dealing) with bug reports is a really important area. When new fixes come through it is important to let people know. please try a newer version is one such answer. There is also full list of responses. It is important that the person who raised the bug, no matter if it is incomplete, a duplicate or any other reason is made to feel that their bug is important. Simply put, to them, it is the most important bug in the world and should be treated as such.

The Bug Squad

If you'd like to know more about the treatment of bugs, please head over to The Bug Squad new comers are always welcome.