[Python-Dev] guidelines for bug triage

[Jeremy Hylton]

Last week I promised to post some guidelines on bug triage.  In the
interim, the number of open bugs has dropped by about 30.  We still
have 71 open bugs to deal with.  The goal is to get the number of open
bugs below 50 before the 2.0b2 release next week, so there is still a
lot to do.  So I've written up some general guidelines, which I'll
probably put in a PEP.

One thing that the guidelines lack are a list of people willing to
handle bug reports and their areas of expertise.  If people send me
email with that information, I'll include it in the PEP.

Jeremy


1. Make sure the bug category and bug group are correct.  If they are 
   correct, it is easier for someone interested in helping to find
   out, say, what all the open Tkinter bugs are.

2. If it's a minor feature request that you don't plan to address
   right away, add it to PEP 42 or ask the owner to add it for you.
   If you add the bug to PEP 42, mark the bug as "feature request",
   "later", and "closed"; and add a comment to the bug saying that
   this is the case (mentioning the PEP explicitly).

3. Assign the bug a reasonable priority.  We don't yet have a clear
   sense of what each priority should mean, except than 9 is highest
   and 1 is lowest.  One rule, however, is that bugs with priority
   seven or higher must be fixed before the next release.

4. If a bug report doesn't have enough information to allow you to
   reproduce or diagnose it, send email to the original submittor and
   ask for more information.  If the original report is really thin
   and your email doesn't get a response after a reasonable waiting
   period, you can close the bug.

5. If you fix a bug, mark the status as "Fixed" and close it.  In the
   comments, including the CVS revision numbers of the affected
   files.  In the CVS checkin message, include the SourceForge bug
   number *and* a normal description of the change.

6. If you are assigned a bug that you are unable to deal with assign
   it to someone else.  The guys at PythonLabs get paid to fix these
   bugs, so pick one of them if there is no other obvious candidate.