Fixed means fixed in a production release [LWN.net]

Fixed means fixed in a production release

Posted Feb 4, 2012 22:17 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Fixed means fixed in a production release by cwillu
Parent article: FreeBSD and release engineering

A bug tracker is a tool for developers to keep track of known behaviour,

You must be talking about some particular bug trackers because many bug trackers are in fact for lots of other things.

Some bug trackers provide the important service of telling users what not to waste their time reporting because it's already been reported. Some provide the service of telling users what bugs they can eliminate by switching to another release or just waiting.

None of that is relevant here, of course, where the disappointment springs not from the way the bug tracker is used but from the statement of process made in response to the bug report: this isn't going to get fixed for you. I just wanted to dispute an overgeneralization about bug trackers.

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Fixed means fixed in a production release

Posted Feb 5, 2012 10:45 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Again, it's not really that the statement of process is a bad thing. An explicit policy that bugs are not fixed in the current release would be reasonable - but then, please drop the pretence of having a 'supported' stable release. What seems to happen is that a fix is checked in and the bug is closed, more out of habit or a desire to stop it appearing on the list of open bugs than as a conscious choice. This makes it more difficult to maintain the stable release in parallel with the latest development version, and makes it less likely that the bug will be fixed in stable, even if it is a professed goal of the project and its developers to support the stable release with fixes.