Re: bugzilla question

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc cu-portland edu> writes:

> After my foolish mis-speak the other day, I figured I should go and beat
> up on all the web pages for bugzilla as my penance. So here I am, back
> at "Severity" again.  Here's what the bugzilla page lists for Severity.
> 
> 
> Severity 
> This field describes the impact of a bug. 
> 
> Blocker       Blocks development and/or testing work 
> 
> Critical      crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak 
> 
> Major         major loss of function 
> 
> Minor         minor loss of function, or other problem where easy workaround is present 
> 
> Trivial       cosmetic problem like misspelt words or misaligned text 
> 
> Enhancement   Request for enhancement
> 
> 
> 5 of these seem pretty clear cut as a description of the "severity" of
> the bug.  However, "blocker" seems more like a combination of a
> "priority" and a "severity".  It's blocking either development or
> testing, which implies that it needs to be worked on right away,
> although it doesn't come right out and say that.  Is there a need for a
> bug more severe than "Critical"?

"Blocker" is not necessarily more severe for users than "Critical", it
is just different:

 - Blocker: blocks development - people, for instance, can't even
   compile their code to work on their bugs.

 - Critical: badly affects users

It has been argued elsewhere that "Blocker" doesn't make all that
much sense for GNOME because for blocker bugs people are likely
to simply fix them, or to find the culprit on IRC. I'll avoid
expressing an opinion one way or the other on that.

> Is Critical combined with Urgent sufficient to replace "blocker", or
> does that really deserve it's own "severity"?
> If blocker belongs, does it automatically get set as "urgent", since
> it's stopping other people from working?

Not everything that is Critical/Urgent would qualify as a blocker -
a security hole is not a blocker, for instance.

In general I'd consider priorities the domain of the maintainer(s),
just because someone submits a bug that is "Blocker" severity,
doesn't mean that I want it to appear at the top of my work list
until I decide that that it actually needs immediate attention.

We don't allow setting priorities from the submission page, so I don't
think setting severities should automatically affect the priority.
 
> What is the default bug severity?  Is it minor, or major? 

Default bug severity is "Normal" - in this case, it was omitted from
the list entirely, not just put in the list with no description.
(Even with my dislike for defining Normal, I would consider this a bit
extreme. I've just put in a placeholder for it.)

> I don't think I'd file too many "minor" bugs right off, because I
> often need help to find a work around, even if it's a fairly simple
> work-around.  So since I'm SOL, I probably file my bug as major, as
> that seems like it will get more attention.  Despite the dificulty
> in defining "normal", I think that something like that is probably
> needed as a "severity".

Yes, its needed and there.
 
> I don't consider these issues "show stoppers", so if you're looking to
> migrate to bugzilla, go for it.  I'll be beating on it more over the
> next few days, and letting you know of things that I find.  I'll also
> try to write up proper descriptions for severity and priority, and
> submit them here as patches to bug-status.html. 

Great.

Regards,
                                        Owen

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