GStreamer Spring Hackfest 2018 Bug Triaging Sprints

GStreamer Bugzilla Spring Clean - Bug Triaging Sprint

Throughout the hackfest we will have multiple bug triage sprints.

These will be short ~30 minute sessions every day at 10.30h and 15.30h.

The goal of these is to clear out bugzilla backlog, as a goal in itself and to prepare the field for a migration to gitlab.

These bug triaging sprints are about quantity, not quality.

They are not about reviewing all those patches of your co-workers you have had on your list for months, or fixing up those work-in-progress patches you've had in bugzilla since 2005.

They are about triaging and making decisions on all those bugs that have stalled, have never had any response or are no longer useful or wanted. Or maybe just need someone to make a decision.

If in doubt, discuss with others on the squad, that's what we're there for.

The goal is to close bugs or move them along, or figure out what's needed in order to move them along. Sometimes they are lacking focus or have lost focus and someone needs to restate what's missing or what should be done or not done.

If you want to look at something in more depth later, assign the bug to yourself or comment accordingly and look at it afterwards.

The purpose of bugzilla is not to be an archive of all features missing or all things broken. Bugzilla is a tool for developers, and bugs should only be kept open if they are useful.

Bugs must have actionable information in order to be useful. There is no point in having a bug open about a crash for example if there is no information that enables us to do anything about it. We can say that we're sorry about the crash, and that we fully believe there's a bug somewhere but can't do anything about it without more information, and then close the bug in the hope that someone will file a new bug with more details if it still happens in recent versions.

Notes

  • Be polite. Be apologetic. But be ruthless.
  • Thank reporters for their bug report, whether it's useful or not. They were just trying to help.
  • Not every feature request needs to stay in bugzilla forever
  • If something is still valid or still applies or still seems like something we want, it's useful to leave a comment in that respect as well.

Hackfests/GstSpringHackfest2018/BugTriagingSprints (last edited 2018-05-01 08:35:57 by TimMuller)