Re: perlbug HOWTO

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At Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:19:19 +0100,
Tony Bowden wrote:
> I've been chatting with Casey about how we should best be dealing with
> the perlbug RT interface - e.g. what to do when you come across a bug
> that's resolved, what the various statuses mean etc.

The proper place for this particular discussion is probably the
currently-defunct bugmongers list.

> There doesn't seem to be any documentation anywhere on this, and we
> thought the QA wiki might be a useful place to try putting it
> together.

I'd rather something that can actually live on bugs.perl.org.

> Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Here's my document for the old perlbug.  It's horribly out of date.
But would be a good place to start.


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=3Dhead1 NAME

AdminFAQ - The Perl Bug Administrator FAQ

=3Dhead1 DESCRIPTION

Frequently Asked Questions related to Perl Bug Administration.

$Revision: 1.5 $
$Date: 2001/12/06 04:53:46 $

=3Dhead1 This FAQ

This FAQ is intended for use by the perlbug administrators.  The
latest version can be found at
http://bugs.perl.org/admin/perlbug.cgi?req=3Dadminfaq.  If you have any
comments or patches to this document, please send them to the author
at the address below.

=3Dhead1 Who are the perl bugmongers?

The perl bugmongers are the Perl Bug Adminstrators.  Some of these people a=
re
active Perl Porters, others are just interested in learning or helping out.=
 =20

=3Dhead1 What do the bugmongers do?

=3Dover 2

=3Ditem *=20

Clean up old bugs

=3Ditem *=20

Organize/categorize and assign new bugs

=3Ditem *=20

Discuss better ways for dealing with perl bugs

=3Dback=20

=3Dhead1 What is the lifecycle of a perl bug?

=3Dover 2

=3Ditem 1

A bug report is submitted with the C<perlbug> program to one of the
following addresses:

        [email protected]
        [email protected]
        [email protected]
        [email protected]
        [email protected]

Mail to these addresses is forwarded to a program called C<perlbugtron>.

=3Ditem 2

A tracking number is automatically generated by C<perlbugtron>, and
the message is forwarded to [email protected] (or
[email protected] for Mac bug reports, or
[email protected] for Windows bug reports.)

=3Ditem 3

A discusion ensues on p5p regarding a solution for the bug.  During
this time, a perlbug admin should categorize the bug, and possibly
assign it.

=3Ditem 4

One or more solutions are proposed, and one is approved by consensus
and/or the pumpking.

=3Ditem 5

A perlbug admin marks the bug as closed.

=3Dback

=3Dhead1 How do I close a bug?

This process varies depending on the age of the bug.  There are many
bugs in the bug database dating back several years.  Many of these
bugs have already been solved in recent version of perl.  These are
old bugs.

Everything else is a new bug.

(Another way to make this distinction is this:  Anything that requires the
attention of p5p is a new bug.)

=3Dhead2 How does a non-administrator close a bug?

They can send an email to [email protected] with your suggestions,
or to C<< propose_close_<bugid>@bugs.perl.org >> where C<< <bugid> >>
is the the bug ID of the bug you want to close.

=3Dhead2 How do I close an I<old> bug?

=3Dover 2

=3Ditem 1

Perform the necessary tests to prove it has been solved.

=3Ditem 2

Make an entry in the bug database noting the reason you are closing
it.  This can be as simple as "fixed in perl 5.6.0 (tested on Jul 17
2000)".

The easiest way to make this entry is to send a message to
close_<bugid>@bugs.perl.org, where the content of the message is the
log entry.

=3Dback

=3Dhead2 How do I close a I<new> bug?

If there has been a thread on p5p culminating in a patch (or some other
final looking statement), mark the bug as closed.  You may wish to add
a comment along the lines of "resolved in <msgid>"

=3Dhead1 When do I delete a bug?

Bugs should rarely be deleted.  There may be times when a bug should
not be in the database, for example, spam that may have gotten
through, or an exact duplicate of another bug report.  (And in the
duplicate case, it's probably better to link the bug to the other
copy, to make sure the threads keep properly, if there has been
discussion under both ids.)

=3Dhead1 I don't want to bother p5p with a bug related email.  How do I get=
 it into the database?

Send (or CC) the email to [email protected].  Your message must have a
subject line that contains C<< [ID <bugid>] >>, where C<< <bugid> >>
is the bug ID number.

=3Dhead1 What versions of perl should I check for bugs to have been fixed i=
n?

Generally, you should check 5.00503, 5.6.1, perl-current, and
perl-5.6.x-current.  Theoretically, once it works in an earlier
version, it will work in all future versions, but it can't hurt to
perform the regression test by hand.


=3Dhead1 Web Interface: Those Checkboxes

Discussed in bugmongers Message-id: <[email protected]>

The perlbugtron user interface has a lot of checkboxes.  When you
modify an item, you need to check the box for that item.  Otherwise,
when you click C<update>, nothing will happen and you will receive an
error message.=20

The page you get back after altering bugs will only have the bugs
checked on it.  So if you have a list of 25 bugs, and you edit 3 of
them, the page you receive will have only these 3 bugs in it.
This is so it is easier to check that your changes were entered correctly.

=3Dhead1 Why is the note text displayed I<outside> of the textarea?

The note is displayed outside of the text area so you can add a new
note I<in> the textarea.  If there's more than one note, the form will
contain links to all the notes instead of the actual note texts.

=3Dhead1 What is the I<abandoned> status for?

The I<abandoned> status means: "This bug probably cannot be fixed.  We
may come back to fix it after all the other bugs have been resolved."

Bugs are very rarely abandoned without good reason.

As of this writing, bugs in the pre-5.6 install process are being
abandoned.  The installation system changed a lot for 5.6, and many
issues were resolved.

=3Dhead1 How do I get more help?

To get more help on the email interface, send a message with the
subject C<-h> to [email protected].  For more detailed help, use C<-H>;

Or you can use
http://bugs.perl.org/perlbug.cgi?req=3Dmailhelp

The definitive location for more help on the web interface is

http://bugs.perl.org/admin/perlbug.cgi?req=3Dwebhelp  for administrators=20
and
http://bugs.perl.org/perlbug.cgi?req=3Dwebhelp for normal users

=3Dhead1 AUTHOR

Robert Spier <rspier at cpan.org>

=3Dhead1 THANKS

Mark-Jason Dominus

Richard Foley

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