[Python-Dev] Bug Database

[Jeremy Hylton]

Thanks for doing some triage, Moshe!

I am in the process of moving the bug database from jitterbug to
SourceForge.  There are still a few kinks in the process, which I am
trying to finish today.  There are two problems you will see with the
current database:

    * Many bugs do not contain all the followup messages that
    Jitterbug has.  I am working to add them.

    * There are many duplicates of some bugs.  The duplicates are the
    result of the debugging process for my Jitterbug -> SF conversion
    script.  I will remove these before I am done.  Any bug numbered
    higher than 110740 is probably a duplicate at this point.

The conversion process has placed most of the Jitterbug entries in the
SF bug tracker.  The PR number is in the SF summary and most of the
relevant Jitterbug headers (submittor, data, os, version) are part of
the body of the SF bug.  Any followups to the Jitterbug report are
stored as followup comments in SF.

The SF bug tracker has several fields that we can use to manage bug
reports.

* Category: Describes what part of Python the bug applies to.  Current
values are parser/compiler, core, modules, library, build, windows,
documentation.  We can add more categories, e.g. library/xml, if that
is helpful.

* Priority: We can assign a value from 1 to 9, where 9 is the highest
priority.  We will have to develop some guidelines for what those
priorities mean.  Right now everthing is priority 5 (medium).  I would
hazard a guess that bugs causing core dumps should have much higher
priority.

* Group: These reproduce some of the Jitterbug groups, like trash,
platform-specific, and irreproducible.  These are rough categories
that we can use, but I'm not sure how valuable they are.

* Resolution: What we plan to do about the bug.

* Assigned To: We can now assign bugs to specific people for
resolution.

* Status: Open or Closed.  When a bug has been fixed in the CVS
repository and a test case added to cover the bug, change its status
to Closed.

New bug reports should use the sourceforge interface.

Jeremy