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Goals of bug triage

Posted Mar 3, 2009 18:53 UTC (Tue) by DeletedUser32991 ((unknown), #32991)
In reply to: Goals of bug triage by man_ls
Parent article: Ubuntu now offering mainline kernel builds

I think your paraphrase is exaggerating what I said, which was more (in the part you chose to reword) bonding is a big part of the benefit Ubuntu gets from its bug triaging and the risk associated with premature bug-closing is much reduced compared to the other big distros because Debian fixes to annoying bugs find their way into Ubuntu in time. In particular, I would prefer if you omit clueless, even in parentheses.

This is largely unrelated to what Ubuntu does and does not on the engineering side. I am sure that Ubuntu also contributes fixes and packages to Debian. But what do you think that the bugs fixed for the first time shortly before and during Debian's lenny freeze mean to Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04? They will likely be fixed in 9.04 regardless of whether they were addressed in Ubuntu or not.

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Goals of bug triage

Posted Mar 3, 2009 19:54 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

But bug triaging is not, and should never be, a means to encourage participation of non-technical (OK, not clueless) people. There are blogs, meetings, fora and technology fairs where such people can contribute. Bug triaging is a most technical occupation.

As you probably know triaging originates in the medical profession, from when scarce resources can be devoted to treat huge masses of patients, either wounded in battle or victims of some epidemia. A medic first triages patients using three or four colors: green, yellow, red and black. You do not want to try to waste time resuscitating someone without a chance (black); and you do want to treat urgent patients (red) before stable ones (yellow), or even patients already cured (green). Now imagine if a well-meaning but ignorant volunteer was to do the triaging in order to save medical time. It would result in wasting time on unnecessary procedures and letting critical patients die. Somehow it would look a bit like Colin Watson's post, and that is not the proper way to contribute.

Just wishing that bugs will be fixed in Debian (and then patches will somehow get into Ubuntu) is not useful; bugs fixed in Debian do not necessarily percolate to Ubuntu. Just hoping that Ubuntu contributes something ("fixes and packages") back to Debian is not useful either. There has to be a willful dedication to contribute in a technically competent manner. A fanatic dedication to quality Control in Debian is precisely what sets it apart from other distributions, and Launchpad just seems to generate noise.

Goals of bug triage

Posted Mar 3, 2009 20:22 UTC (Tue) by Requiem (guest, #51519) [Link]

"Debian fixes to annoying bugs find their way into Ubuntu in time."

Debian fixes bugs sure, but Ubuntu is drawing from Unstable, once the major bugs get fixed, those packages get moved into testing, and new packages get put into stable (not right away, but the point stands), so Ubuntu isn't seeing all the bugs Debian fixes at the testing--> stable step, and misses half the bug fixes in the Unstable --> testing step.

Goals of bug triage

Posted Mar 3, 2009 22:05 UTC (Tue) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link]

I think you totally missed how debian works

Debian branches

Posted Mar 4, 2009 10:40 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I think that what gevaerts means is that Debian versions do not work that way. I also used to think that bugs are corrected in the transitions from unstable to stable, but after some research found otherwise. For clarity let's call unstable, testing and stable 'branches', and keep 'version' for packages.

Versions are entered into the unstable branch, and after a suitable period they go to testing. They stay there as long as the current version is in testing, or until a new version comes along. Every 18-36 months a new branch (including versions of all packages) becomes stable. But if a problem is found in a package, a new version of the package that corrects that problem comes again through unstable, and eventually promotes again to testing (or not if further problems are found). No changes are made between unstable and testing; patches are always applied before entering unstable.

If Ubuntu draws from the unstable branch they will eventually gather all fixes. Of course it can take 18 to 36 months to get a new version with those fixes, so with a lifecycle of 6 months most of the time Ubuntu is on its own.