An interesting read when discussing what to do about our bugs...

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 07:34:57PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> nodata wrote:
> >Am Samstag, den 19.01.2008, 13:10 -0500 schrieb seth vidal:
> >>On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:08 +0100, nodata wrote:
> >>
> >>>Apart from security bugs, I have never had a bug fixed in Ubuntu, ever.
> >>>The tactic seems to be to wait until Debian fix it, or wait until Debian
> >>>fix it and then ask you to upgrade to the next release.
> >>>
> >>>Fedora does a lot better, much better, but probably the most annoying
> >>>aspect of using Fedora's bugzilla is the attitude of some of the
> >>>maintainers (not all) and the "closing, report upstream" attitude.
> >>>
> >>>Closing a bug report with "report it upstream" is a let down. It's
> >>>repetitive boring work that a computer should be doing.
> >>>
> >>>It takes a lot of effort to report a bug, and by this I mean that I know
> >>>a *lot* of people who find a bug, and maybe a fix, but don't bug report
> >>>it. They should be, but I can see why they don't.
> >>Hmm, is that what the 'upstream' close reason is for? Normally, I close
> >>things 'upstream' when I have checked a fix into the upstream code base.
> >>Which seems pretty reasonable time to close it to me.
> >>
> >>-sv
> >>
> >
> >I'm talking about closing the bug and telling the reporter to report
> >upstream, i.e. "go away".
> >
> 
> I agree that the above is bad.
> 
> Sometimes (rarely) I do forward a bugreport upstream (using upstream's 
> preferred bug tracking mechanism) and then kindly explain that I'm not 
> intimate enough with the code to fix the issue at hand with a reasonable 
> effort, point them to the upstream bug and add them to the CC there if 
> possible. And then close with a resolution of upstream. Not very pretty, 
> but honest and way better then letting bugs linger for months.

It is possible to link tickets between the Red Hat bugzilla and other
BZ instances. At the bottom there is a 'External Bugzilla References'
form - simply add the number of the associated upstream BZ ticket. 
Rather than entering upstream and then closing the RH BZ ticket, I'd
suggest using this linkage between BZ instances. Then when the upstream
maintainer finds a fix, you still have a record of the fact that it
needs to be pulled into Fedora. If you close the Fedora BZ, you'll
never remember to pull in the fix from upstream.

Dan.
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