NAME
The Perl Bug Administrator FAQ
DESCRIPTION
Frequently Asked Questions related to Perl Bug Administration.
$Revision: 1.7 $ $Date: 2000/08/04 06:18:46 $
This FAQ
This FAQ is intended for use by the perlbug administrators. The latest version can be found at http://bugs.perl.org/admin/perlbug.cgi?req=adminfaq. If you have any comments or patches to this document, please send them to the author at the address below.
Who are the perl bugmongers?
The perl bugmongers are the Perl Bug Adminstrators. Some of these people are active Perl Porters, others are just interested in learning or helping out.
What do the bugmongers do?
Clean up old bugs
Organize/categorize and assign new bugs
Discuss better ways for dealing with perl bugs
What is the lifecycle of a perl bug?
- 1. A Bug report is submitted with perlbug (to perlbug@perl.org|perlbug@perl.com|macperlbug@perl.org|perl-win32-porters@perl.org|module-bug@perl.org)
- 2. A tracking number is automatically generated by the perlbugtron, and the message is forwarded to p5p (or macperl-porters@macperl.org|perl-win32-porters@activestate.com)
- 3. A discusion (hopefully) ensues on p5p regarding a solution for the bug. (During this time the bug should be categorized, and possibly assigned.)
- 4. One or more solutions are proposed, and one is approved by consensus and/or the pumpking.
- 5. The bug is marked as closed.
How do I close a bug?
This process varies depending on the age of the bug. There are many bugs in the bug database dating back several years. Many of these bugs have already been solved in recent version of perl. These are old bugs.
Everything else is a new bug.
(Another way to make this distinction is this: Anything that requires the attention of p5p is a new bug.)
How do I close a bug if I am not an administrator?
You can't do that directly.
You can send an email to admins@bugs.perl.org with your suggestions, or to propose_close_<bugid>@bugs.perl.org
How do I close an _old_ bug?
- 1. Perform the necessary tests to prove it has been solved.
- 2. Make an entry in the bug database noting the reason you are closing it. This can be as simple as "fixed in perl 5.6.0 (tested on Jul 17 2000)".
-
The easiest way to make this entry is to send a message to close_<bugid>@bugs.perl.org, where the content of the message is the log entry.
How do I close a _new_ bug?
If there has been a thread on p5p culminating in a patch (or some other final looking statement), mark the bug as closed. You may wish to add a comment along the lines of "resolved in <msgid>"
When do I delete a bug?
The short answer is NEVER.
There may be times when a bug should not be in the database, for example, spam that may have gotten through, or an exact duplicate of another bug report. (And in the duplicate case, it's probably better to link the bug to the other copy, to make sure the threads keep properly.)
What versions of perl should I check for bugs to have been fixed in?
This depends greatly on when the bug was created. Generally, you should check 5.00503, 5.6.0, perl-current, and perl-5.6.x-current. (Theoretically, once it works in an earlier version, it will work in all future versions, but it can't help to perform the regression test by hand.)
Web Interface: Those Checkboxes
Discussed in bugmongers Message-id: <397466D6.6F05E8B8@m.dasa.de>
The perlbugtron user interface has a lot of checkboxes. When you modify items, you need to check the box for that item. Otherwise, when you click update, nothing will happen and you will recieve an error.
The page you get back after altering bugs will only have the bugs checked on it. So if you have a list of 25 bugs, and you edit 3 of them, the page you recieve will have only these 3 bugs in it, for you to peruse/check. If you edit all 25 of them at once, the same applies, it just may not look vastly different to begin with.
Why is the note field displayed _outside_ of the textarea?
The note is displayed next to the text area, so you can add another one IN the text area. If there's more than one, you get links to all the notes instead.
What is the _abandoned_ status for?
The Abandoned status means: "This bug is no longer a priority or probably cannot be fixed. We may come back to fix it after all the other bugs have been resolved."
Things are very rarely abandoned without good reason.
As of this writing, pre 5.6 install bugs are being abandoned. The installation system changed a lot for 5.6, and many issues were resolved.
How do I get more help?
To get more help on the email interface, send a message with the subject '-h' to bugdb@perl.org. For more detailed help, use '-H';
The definitive location for more help on the web interface is
http://bugs.perl.org/admin/perlbug.cgi?req=help if you are an administrator
http://bugs.perl.org/perlbug.cgi?req=help for normal users
AUTHOR
Robert Spier <rspier at cpan.org>