Help developers weed through bug reports and find truly valid bugs

["Gérard Talbot"]

Hello,

Subject:    Re: Konqueror problems and a SERIOUS commitment
From:       Dawit A
Date:       2011-05-07 14:59:54
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=130480023503730&w=2

{
The most important help any user can provide however is to help
the developers weed through bug reports and find ones that are truly
valid bugs. This is especially true for the components that have the
highest amount of bugs reported against them. For example, since we
are talking about konqueror specifically here, there are some 441
crash, 1505 normal, 1085 wishlist bug reported as generic konqueror
issues. The truth is most of these bug reports are really not
konqueror bugs, but bugs against components used in konqueror, e.g.
khtml or they are totally duplicates, or they have already been fixed
in recent versions or simply they cannot be reproduced (by even the
user that reported them).

In order for a developer to fix your bug report (s)he has to weed
through all of that in the order reported. Old bug reports first and
fix them. (...)
}
Subject:    Re: Konqueror problems and a SERIOUS commitment
From:       Dawit A <adawit () kde ! org>
Date:       2011-05-07 14:59:54
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=130480023503730&w=2

---------------


Here's my proposal to *fix* such difficult... and I really mean fix.

Introduce the clean-report keyword. Only experienced bug triagers should
be able to use it.

(The clean-report keyword was first introduced by bugzilla.mozilla.org; in
2005, there were so many non-actionable and unconfirmed bug reports that
it became necessary to introduce the INCOMPLETE bug report status and then
to implement a robo-resolving software to crawl the whole bugzilla bug
reports.)


A bug report which would have the clean-report keyword added would mean:

- the bug is valid and we can even find/quote a spec excerpt about it
- the bug report has clear steps to reproduce
- the bug report summary and description are formal and factual
- the bug reporter replies back when asked questions or to provide more info
- the bug report has a reduced testcase (triggering web standards
compliant rendering mode : do Ctrl+I, rendering mode value) by which we
can reproduce 100% of the time the problem reported
- all of the relevant details, specifics about the system and application
of the bug reporter are mentioned.
E.g.:
"
I am using
KDE Platform Version: 4.7.0
Konqueror version: 4.7.0 (KHTML rendering engine)
Qt Version: 4.7.2
Operating System: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic-pae i686 (32bits)
Distribution: Kubuntu 11.04
here.
"

Overall, a "clean-report" type of bug report is an actionable bug report,
actionable a the software developer perspective. "Actionable" is a term
which Microsoft connect IE beta feedback introduced.

Actionable does not mean that a Konqueror developer can and will fix all
bug reports with the clean-report keyword. Konqueror/KHTML developer

-------------

Other keywords should be introduced to help figure out issues and problems
into categories:

hang : when application is unresponsive and cpu activity % gets high and
remains high

testcase : the bug report has an acceptable testcase which reproduces the
issue/problem described

needsreduction : the bug report has a testcase but it needs to be reduced,
minimized

hasreduction : the bug report has a testcase which is reduced, minimized

css2.1 : the bug is about CSS 2.1 compliance and can be demonstrated by a
testcase in CSS 2.1 test suite

dom2 :  the bug is about one DOM 2 interface (attribute or methods of DOM
2 Core, DOM 2 HTML, DOM 2 Events) and can be demonstrated by a testcase

flash : involves Adobe Flash player; the version would need to be provided

-------------

Maybe some other keywords could be introduced. E.g. jquery. A lot of
websites that make KHTML crash are using jQuery library (1.4.2 minified;
1.6.2 minified) and have advertisements pushed dynamically into websites
with ajax stuff.

-------------

On the issue of investigating crashing websites, I wonder how many of
those websites would still crash if smooth scrolling was disabled and/or
javascript support was disabled and/or mouse gestures would be disabled
and/or Konqueror user is using latest stable available Adobe Flash player.

--------------

New status value for bug report: INCOMPLETE
INCOMPLETE : the bug report lacks information needed, required to make it
actionable, confirmed. INCOMPLETE is close to NEEDSINFO or WAITINGforINFO.


regards, Gérard
-- 
Konqueror Implementation Report of CSS 2.1 test suite (RC6): 9418 testcases
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Konqueror4Bugs/Konq-IR-CSS21TestSuite.html
49 Bugs in Konqueror 4.7
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Konqueror4Bugs/
Contributions to the CSS 2.1 test suite
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/css21testsuite/
CSS 2.1 Test suite RC6, March 23rd 2011
http://test.csswg.org/suites/css2.1/20110323/html4/toc.html