Closing bug reports

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should be closed because they are fixed, have been superseded by another 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)

[Chris Murphy]

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 10:29 AM pmkellly(a)frontier.com
<pmkellly(a)frontier.com&gt; 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  should be closed because they are fixed, have been superseded by another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

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2020-01-01 at 20:58 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 10:29 AM pmkellly(a)frontier.com
>  <pmkellly(a)frontier.com&gt; 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.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Chris Murphy]

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 9:26 AM Adam Williamson
<adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; 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.


-- 
Chris Murphy

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Wed, Jan 01, 2020 at 12:28:41PM -0500, pmkellly(a)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)

[Richard Shaw]

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 7:15 PM Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt; 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