Re: severity changes post-release

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 09:08:49AM -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> Something I've been thinking about for a while... after release, I'd
> like to rename 'critical' to 'crasher' and 'trivial' to 'cosmetic' to
> make it slightly more clear to first time users (esp. via bug-buddy)
> where to place those kinds of bugs. 

'trivial' -> 'cosmetic' sounds fine, but I'm not sure about the first
one.

I guess this whole mail comes down to the fact that we need to collect
examples of what types of bugs are what. I guess all your GNOME 2
tracking experience makes you the best one to generate the initial ideas
there, Luis, since although, for example, I could make up some stuff, I
only look at bugs in a limited number of categories and my ideas are
possibly out of touch with others' versions of reality.

> Less concretely: I'd also definitely like to make 'blocker' more clear
> (since it implies things that just aren't true) but I'm not quite sure
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   Can you clarify this a bit? For example...?

> how best to do it. One possible solution is to split it into two
> categories:
> 
> *security
> *build problem
> 
> but that loses us some generality [as does 'critical'->'crasher', FWIW,
> which is maybe a consideration.] Any thoughts?

I would like clearer titles (or clearer descriptions of what the
categories mean). I think your "blocker" example leaves out a case,
though. Surely one bug "blocks" another if it's just a normal bug (not a
build problem or a security problem) that has to be fixed before the
second one can be fixed. 

Using blockers and "depends upon" lists in this fashion helps to order
the process, so I think it would be a shame to narrow blocker to not
include that. Surely, a blocker is just that .. it essentially blocks
the release for whatever reason and major non-security bugs can do that.

Malcolm

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