Happy New Year Everyone!
In my prior experience I was expected to keep any problem reports I filed (like bug reports) followed up on and make sure they got closed. For me it's a long established habit.
I like to keep my bugzilla list short. Sometimes bugs that I have filed are fixed without without being closed. They just hang around until they age out of the system and someone closes them.
Sometimes, bugs just age and age because I have updated them to be applicable to the current version of Fedora, but no one has had time to look at them. This isn't a criticism. I understand the some bugs are low priority for a number of good reasons.
Today I sent some e'mails to the assignees of some bugs that I think should be closed because they are fixed, have been superseded by another bug, or in one case the application was retired.
I re-read the pages in the wiki on bug reports and the topic of closing bugs seems missing except for "end of life"
Question: Is this an okay thing to do? I asked this once before in the context of a particular bug and the recommendation was that I should send an e'mail to the assignee. I just want to determine if this is a good general case practice.
Have a Great Day!
Pat (tablepc)
On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 10:29 AM pmkellly@frontier.com pmkellly@frontier.com wrote:
Happy New Year Everyone!
In my prior experience I was expected to keep any problem reports I filed (like bug reports) followed up on and make sure they got closed. For me it's a long established habit.
I like to keep my bugzilla list short. Sometimes bugs that I have filed are fixed without without being closed. They just hang around until they age out of the system and someone closes them.
Sometimes, bugs just age and age because I have updated them to be applicable to the current version of Fedora, but no one has had time to look at them. This isn't a criticism. I understand the some bugs are low priority for a number of good reasons.
Today I sent some e'mails to the assignees of some bugs that I think should be closed because they are fixed, have been superseded by another bug, or in one case the application was retired.
I re-read the pages in the wiki on bug reports and the topic of closing bugs seems missing except for "end of life"
Question: Is this an okay thing to do? I asked this once before in the context of a particular bug and the recommendation was that I should send an e'mail to the assignee. I just want to determine if this is a good general case practice.
I'd use the bugzilla NEEDINFO feature to notify the assignee/maintainer, rather than send direct emails. But based on various emails on the subject of... too many emails, the problem with NEEDINFO is it generates more emails. So I'd probably only use NEEDINFO for bugs of some urgency rather than ordinary bugs or bugs that are actually requests for enhancement, and also consider filing the bug upstream. A difficulty with the current system is it's non-obvious to what degree a component's Fedora maintainer is involved with upstream development, versus mainly just packaging it for Fedora.
-- Chris Murphy
On Wed, 2020-01-01 at 20:58 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 10:29 AM pmkellly@frontier.com pmkellly@frontier.com wrote:
Happy New Year Everyone!
In my prior experience I was expected to keep any problem reports I filed (like bug reports) followed up on and make sure they got closed. For me it's a long established habit.
I like to keep my bugzilla list short. Sometimes bugs that I have filed are fixed without without being closed. They just hang around until they age out of the system and someone closes them.
Sometimes, bugs just age and age because I have updated them to be applicable to the current version of Fedora, but no one has had time to look at them. This isn't a criticism. I understand the some bugs are low priority for a number of good reasons.
Today I sent some e'mails to the assignees of some bugs that I think should be closed because they are fixed, have been superseded by another bug, or in one case the application was retired.
I re-read the pages in the wiki on bug reports and the topic of closing bugs seems missing except for "end of life"
Question: Is this an okay thing to do? I asked this once before in the context of a particular bug and the recommendation was that I should send an e'mail to the assignee. I just want to determine if this is a good general case practice.
I'd use the bugzilla NEEDINFO feature to notify the assignee/maintainer, rather than send direct emails. But based on various emails on the subject of... too many emails, the problem with NEEDINFO is it generates more emails. So I'd probably only use NEEDINFO for bugs of some urgency rather than ordinary bugs or bugs that are actually requests for enhancement, and also consider filing the bug upstream. A difficulty with the current system is it's non-obvious to what degree a component's Fedora maintainer is involved with upstream development, versus mainly just packaging it for Fedora.
There are various practices. I tend to be pretty aggressive, honestly - if I notice a bug that looks to me like it is clearly fixed but it's in an open state, I usually just go ahead and close it with a comment. Given that this is a trivially reversible operation I don't really see it as a problem. But if you want to be less direct about it, using a needinfo flag or emailing the maintainer both seem like perfectly fine choices to me.
AFAIK there is no Official Policy on this, or anything, and much as I love writing them it doesn't really seem like an appropriate topic for one, it seems like more of an informal thing that may depend on the people involved.
On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 9:26 AM Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
There are various practices. I tend to be pretty aggressive, honestly - if I notice a bug that looks to me like it is clearly fixed but it's in an open state, I usually just go ahead and close it with a comment.
I do the same thing, or even if it's obsolete.
On Wed, Jan 01, 2020 at 12:28:41PM -0500, pmkellly@frontier.com wrote: ...snip...
Question: Is this an okay thing to do? I asked this once before in the context of a particular bug and the recommendation was that I should send an e'mail to the assignee. I just want to determine if this is a good general case practice.
I'd say if you know that they are fixed you should just close them explaining that. If there's some issue and the maintainer(s) want them to stay open they can always re-open them.
IMHO, you can always ask also in the bug: "Should this be closed? I think it's fixed and will close it in 1 week unless I hear otherwise"
I personally really prefer comments in bugs over needinfo (which seems "pushy" to me? I am not sure why, but I think of needinfo as a escalation over just adding a comment. Sort of a 'hey! you never answered me, and I NEED INFO NOW'.
Personal email about bugs has lots of issues too: * What if the maintainer(s) you mail are no longer taking care of the package and just drop your emails, but then someone new takes over the package. That new person(s) would see all the existing bugs, but would have 0 idea of what your emails might have said to the old maintainers.
* Are you sending to just the point of contact? Or to all maintainers/co-maintainers? Perhaps some co-maintainer is the active person and the point of contact you send to could care less.
* Perhaps some provenpackager sees your bug and fixes it. They can tell you/update the bug, but if you send email to maintainers, they would have no idea it even happened.
Anyhow, just a few cents...as others have noticed, there's no hard guidelines here, just be kind and do the best you can. :)
kevin
First, Thanks to those who replied. I really appreciate it.
I'd say if you know that they are fixed you should just close them explaining that. If there's some issue and the maintainer(s) want them to stay open they can always re-open them.
To me, this seems a little pushy and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that.
IMHO, you can always ask also in the bug: "Should this be closed? I think it's fixed and will close it in 1 week unless I hear otherwise"
Now this seems just perfect for me. I think I will go back to the bugs I sent the e'mails on and do this.
Personal email about bugs has lots of issues too:
- What if the maintainer(s) you mail are no longer taking care of the
package and just drop your emails, but then someone new takes over the package. That new person(s) would see all the existing bugs, but would have 0 idea of what your emails might have said to the old maintainers.
- Are you sending to just the point of contact? Or to all
maintainers/co-maintainers? Perhaps some co-maintainer is the active person and the point of contact you send to could care less.
- Perhaps some provenpackager sees your bug and fixes it. They can tell
you/update the bug, but if you send email to maintainers, they would have no idea it even happened.
Point well made. I hadn't covered all the bases. With a note as above anyone can see what happened. I won't be doing the e'mail method anymore.
Have a Great Day!
Pat (tablepc)
On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 7:15 PM Kevin Fenzi kevin@scrye.com wrote:
I personally really prefer comments in bugs over needinfo (which seems "pushy" to me? I am not sure why, but I think of needinfo as a escalation over just adding a comment. Sort of a 'hey! you never answered me, and I NEED INFO NOW'.
Well yes, they are "pushy" but to me that's the whole point. To be fair, I will ask in a comment first, but if I don't get a response after a week or two (for low priority stuff) then I'll do a NEEDINFO. It's way to easy to ignore/gloss over BZ emails so sometimes something more direct is needed.
Thanks, Richard
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Adam Williamson -
Chris Murphy -
Kevin Fenzi -
pmkellly＠frontier.com -
Richard Shaw