Bug Status Workflow
This document describes best practices for setting Bugzilla status for bugs and feature requests. For Change proposal trackers, use the Bugzilla status described in the Changes policy.
Statuses
The image below presents a general flow chart for bugs in the typical case. The flow is bi-directional: a bug can revert to a previous status if, for example, a proposed fix is incomplete.
The table below summarizes the statuses. More details, including additional keywords, flags, and resolutions are given in the following sections.
Unresolved include directive in modules/ROOT/pages/bug_status.adoc - include::program_management::partial$bz_status.adoc[]
Resolutions
The table below describes the resolutions that can apply to the CLOSED status.
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Priority and Severity
Severity
The Severity field is used to indicate the bug’s importance. The values for the severity field should be assigned with reference to the following guidance:
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Urgent: the bug makes whole system unusable (or it is a security bug, which is per definition urgent)
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High: the bug makes the program in question unusable, or a major packaging guideline violation (license problem, bundled library, etc)
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Medium: a real bug which makes program more difficult to use, at least part of the program is available; possibly workarounds are available
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Low: anything else - cosmetic issues, corner cases with unusual (non-default) configurations, etc.
| The Urgent setting should not usually be used for hardware-specific bugs: a bug which causes the entire distribution to be affected but is restricted to a single specific type of hardware should usually be set to High. For instance, if a bug prevents X.org working correctly on a single particular graphics chipset, use the High severity, not Urgent. |
For most packages, most issues are likely to be of Medium severity. These are not hard and fast rules. Use your best judgement in setting the severity field appropriately. There are obvious cases which require the exercise of judgement—for instance, a bug which affects more than just the program in which it occurs, but less than the 'whole system'.
Priority
The Priority field may be used, at their choice, by maintainers to keep track of the order in which they wish to address bugs in their package(s). This may be done with relation to the severity setting, or by any other method the maintainer chooses, at the maintainer’s sole discretion. It may also be entirely ignored, if the maintainer in question does not wish to use it No-one other than the maintainer or team responsible for a particular bug should change this setting.
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