bugzilla question

[Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc cu-portland edu>]

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"?
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?

What is the default bug severity?  Is it minor, or major?  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".  

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.  Thanks, and sorry this
was so long,

    Greg