Bug management/status

Last update on: 2013-04-16

2011-05-01
Mark Hershberger reached out to other open-source communities (like Mozilla) to look for best practices in bug management and workflow; he started to experiment with a new "unprioritized" value for the "priority" field. He has also been organizing weekly bug triage sessions at different times to allow for participation from different timezones.

2011-06-01
Mark Hershberger continued his efforts to watch, assign and resolve bugs, notably by leading the bug squashing sessions at the Berlin Hackathon; more than 50 bugs where closed. He also worked with Priyanka Dhanda to get meaningful reports and metrics out of bugzilla.

2011-07-01
Mark Hershberger continued to conduct bug triages to surface issues that require attention or decisions; in June, these meetings switched from phone to IRC to improve transparency and accessibility to the rest of the community. After helping developers wrap up the 1.17 tarball, Mark started looking at 1.18 bugs, and led a triage to narrow down the list of open bugs blocking deployment of MediaWiki 1.18 on Wikimedia Foundation sites. He also worked on several concerns raised by the community, such as enabling "International" numerals on Hindi wiki with Priyanka Dhanda's help, and right-to-left and extension bundling issues.

2011-07-25
Mark Hershberger continued to conduct bug triage sessions on IRC, some of which were focused on MediaWiki 1.18 blockers, thumbnails issues, caching and operations-related requests. With Sumana Harihareswara, he cleaned up default assignees in bugzilla in order for assignments to be more meaningful, which prompted a discussion on the wikitech-l list.

2011-08-31
Mark Hershberger held bug triage sessions on Mobile & PDF export/Collections. The bug triage page now lists past and upcoming triages, as well as notes and summaries when available.

2011-09-30
Mark Hershberger continued to hold thematic bug triage sessions; in September, those focused on UploadWizard, Internationalization and Wikibooks & Wikisource. A calendar of upcoming triages is now available. He also reached out to people directly by e-mail to remind them of FIXMEs that were assigned to them. An upcoming focus on his work will be the patches submitted via Bugzilla.

2011-10-31
Mark Hershberger continued to hold themed bug triage sessions; in October, those focused on Fundraiser engineering and the new Wikipedia Android app. Two ad-hoc triages, on shell requests and 1.18 regressions, happened during the New Orleans hackathon. Mark also worked with members of the "MediaWiki Core" group to better identify "highest priority" bugs in Bugzilla and continued to prioritize and respond to new bug reports.

2011-11-02
Sumana Harihareswara led a bug triage on non-MySQL databases (summary, raw notes).

2011-11-30
<section begin=2011-11-30 />In November, Mark Hershberger and Sumana Harihareswara led themed bug triage sessions focusing on non-MySQL databases, MediaWiki 1.18 bugs, and UploadWizard. A session was also dedicated to reviewing patches in bugzilla; volunteer Rusty Burchfield wrote a tool to check if the patches could be applied to trunk, and only 50 were not obsolete due to bitrot. Mark watched for bugs and comments on local village pumps following the deployment of MediaWiki 1.18 to Wikimedia sites. He also continued to prioritize bugs and find developers to address those of highest priority.<section end=2011-11-30 />

2011-12-31
<section begin=2011-12-31/>Mark Hershberger followed up on MediaWiki 1.18 bugs, and wrote a FAQ listing issues and offering solutions until 1.18.1 is released. Mark also continued to go through "highest priority" bugs, dealt with bugzilla vandalism, reviewed patches submitted in bugzilla, and held bug triages on MediaWiki 1.18 and Fundraising engineering.<section end=2011-12-31/>

2012-01-31
<section begin=2012-01-31/>In January, Mark Hershberger worked with developers to prepare for the (planned) 1.19 deployment in February. He worked with volunteers to launch the beta cluster and held a triage to review 1.19 deployment blockers. The beta cluster has already begun to show some promise with the bugs it has helped reveal.<section end=2012-01-31/>

2012-02-29
<section begin=2012-02-29/>Mark Hershberger has been using the 1.19 deployment cycle to work with on-wiki editors to find and fix bugs as the deployment cycle goes on. Through the connections that he makes, he hopes to use these relationships during future deployments to make them smoother.<section end=2012-02-29/>

2012-03-31
<section begin=2012-03-31/>Mark Hershberger started gathering volunteers to take part in the Bug Squad to help triage bugs.<section end=2012-03-31/>

2012-04-monthly
<section begin=2012-04-monthly/>Mark Hershberger used the deployment of MediaWiki 1.20wmf1 to gather volunteers for the Bug Squad. He has begun working with volunteers on IRC to coordinate bug-grooming activities.<section end=2012-04-monthly/>

2012-05-monthly
<section begin="2012-05-monthly"/>Mark Hershberger wrote a triaging guide and the Engineering Community Team is now encouraging volunteers to use it to respond to new bugs.<section end="2012-05-monthly"/>

2012-06-monthly
<section begin="2012-06-monthly"/>The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Bug Wrangler to work on management of bugs.<section end="2012-06-monthly"/>

2012-07-03
<section begin=2012-07-03/>The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Bug Wrangler to work on management of bugs.<section end=2012-07-03/>

2012-07-monthly
<section begin="2012-07-monthly"/>The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Bug Wrangler to work on management of bugs.<section end="2012-07-monthly"/>

2012-08-monthly
<section begin="2012-08-monthly"/>The Wikimedia Foundation is nearing the end of its hiring process for a new Bug Wrangler, who will lead triage activities and train volunteers to triage as well. In the interim, volunteers such as Krenair and Thehelpfulone have stepped in to partially fill the gap. Volunteer Matanya Moses is planning to lead an online bug triage meeting, focusing on unreviewed patches, on September 5th.<section end="2012-08-monthly"/>

2012-10-11
<section begin="2012-10-11"/>Andre Klapper joined the WMF as Bug Wrangler (announcement) on 8 October. He is first concentrating on finding, consolidating, and triaging bugs relating to MediaWiki 1.21 deployments, and on improving the documentation around handling bug reports.<section end="2012-10-11"/>

2012-10-19
<section begin="2012-10-19"/>Andre Klapper, Sumana Harihareswara, and Daniel Zahn discussed the necessary prerequisites to upgrading bugzilla.wikimedia.org, which is currently at version 4.0.6, to 4.2.3. We have 4 possible approaches:


 * 1) Do nothing right now because it's not urgent, and check again in 3 months. We believe we've hotfixed all the crucial problems between 4.0.6 and now; if that's the case, we will likely choose this option.
 * 2) If there's an urgent need to upgrade NOW, grab the tarball, unpack it live, and pray. Andre is checking whether our current version as installed urgently needs upgrading, in which case Ops (most likely Daniel) will do this.
 * 3) Find or create a Debian package suitable for installing on Precise, write the necessary Puppet four-liner, and deploy that way.  Andre has some packaging experience and we can get help elsewhere in our community & WMF if we go this route.
 * 4) Puppetize all of Bugzilla and deploy that way.  We probably do not have enough spare time among Puppet domain experts at WMF and in our community to do this soon, so it's the least likely right now, even though ideally it's the best and most sustainable path.

Andre is investigating and will be leading the upgrade effort, no matter what option we choose.

Update 30 minutes later: We've live-upgraded to 4.0.8, which is old-stable (has all the current security fixes), so now Andre is going to investigate how much functionality we want (and how urgently) that would require a major upgrade.<section end="2012-10-19"/>

2012-10-monthly
<section begin="2012-10-monthly"/>New Bug Wrangler Andre Klapper had many discussions with different stakeholders to get a better impression of how work is done, how people interact with the bug tracker, what the expectations are and what policies might be needed. He investigated the product/component organization within bugzilla, started triaging incoming and older reports, and did maintenance work (creation and partial cleanup of products and components). bugzilla.wikimedia.org was upgraded to 4.0.8 with the help of Daniel Zahn, and investigations started to determine how urgent an upgrade to 4.2 was with regard to functionality improvements. Plans for the next month include improving documentation on bug management and bug triaging, and describing interactions between the bug wrangler and the different teams.<section end="2012-10-monthly"/>

2012-11-06
<section begin="2012-11-06"/>In the past week, aside from the usual triaging, Andre updated some bug triage and Bugzilla documentation, published his Greasemonkey scripts in a Git repository, went through obsolete extensions and updated their BZ descriptions.

This week, Andre will follow up on the process for collaborating with product managers and teams (including expectations and workflows with bugs), and on "undeploying" (removing) deployed extensions from WMF sites.<section end="2012-11-06"/>

2012-11-13
<section begin="2012-11-13"/>Andre continued working on standardizing Bugzilla components, documenting the bug workflow, and triaging bugs. He especially investigated thumbnailing and search issues. Andre also started contacting WMF engineering teams to consult with them on how they use Bugzilla.

Andre is also considering an ECT yearly goal of reducing the rate of growth of new bugs or changing the velocity of our new Bugzilla issues growth.<section end="2012-11-13"/>

2012-11-20
<section begin="2012-11-20"/>Andre massively cleaned up and improved the bug management documentation on Bug management and its subpages. He started a discussion on standardizing the meaning of "highest priority" in Bugzilla, investigated the use of groups in Bugzilla and also committed an upgrade of his bugtriage scripts to the code repository. Furthermore, Bugzilla was upgraded to version 4.0.9 by Daniel Zahn.<section end="2012-11-20"/>

2012-11-27
<section begin="2012-11-27"/>Andre mostly spent the week with Bugzilla gruntwork (adding extensions, people to bugmail, triaging) and continuing tasks from the previous week, such as improving the bug management documentation and keeping an eye on the discussion on standardizing the meaning of "highest priority" in Bugzilla. He also investigated upgrading Bugzilla to version 4.2 by some basic testing.<section end="2012-11-27"/>

2012-11-monthly
<section begin="2012-11-monthly"/>Andre Klapper improved and cleaned up updated large parts of the bug management and Bugzilla documentation. This includes the beginnings of a triage guide. He also published his Greasemonkey scripts in a Git repository and went through obsolete extensions and updated their Bugzilla descriptions. Andre started analyzing how Wikimedia engineering teams use Bugzilla and their related workflows. He also investigated a potential upgrade of Bugzilla to version 4.2 by doing some basic testing. Furthermore, a wikitech-l discussion on standardizing the meaning of "highest priority" in Bugzilla resulted in creating a new "Immediate" priority status.<section end="2012-11-monthly"/>

2012-12-11
<section begin="2012-12-11"/>Daniel Zahn and Andre Klapper upgraded Wikimedia Bugzilla to the latest stable version (4.2.4) which provides higher flexibility for displaying interface elements, improved custom search, better JSON-RPC support and a solid base for future improvements being considered. Andre looked after reports about CSS issues after the MediaWiki 1.21 wmf5 deployment, continued to improve bug management related documentation, and did usual gruntwork (triaging, creating requested Bugzilla components, etc.)<section end="2012-12-11"/>

2012-12-18
<section begin="2012-12-18"/>In the last week smaller regex fixes got deployed in Bugzilla to fix automatic linking to Gerrit changesets (bug 40344, bug 41321). Discussions took place on wikitech-l mailing list about a "patch in gerrit" bug status, with the ops team about the situation of RT, and with the Wikidata team about automatic notifications (comments) from Gerrit into Bugzilla about patch status changes. Also, the amount of bug reports that are resolved as RESOLVED LATER was decreased by about 100 tickets, in order to get rid of that resolution in the long run, and also a number of unprioritized bug reports received a priority setting.<section end="2012-12-18"/>

2012-12-monthly
<section begin="2012-12-monthly"/>Daniel Zahn and Andre Klapper upgraded Bugzilla to the latest stable version (4.2.4) which provides higher flexibility for displaying interface elements, improved custom search, better JSON-RPC support and a solid base for future improvements being considered. Andre continued to improve the bug management documentation. Many bug reports that were previously closed as RESOLVED LATER were retriaged and RESOLVED LATER was disabled for future use, and a large number of previously unprioritized bug reports received a priority setting. Furthermore, Andre looked after reports about CSS issues after the MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 deployment and followed up by triaging, creating requested Bugzilla components, etc. Several smaller regex fixes were deployed in Bugzilla to fix automatic linking to Gerrit changesets. A "patch in gerrit" bug status was discussed on wikitech-l with the conclusion to wait for automatic notifications (comments) from Gerrit into Bugzilla about patch status changes first (which is being worked on by the Wikidata team).<section end="2012-12-monthly"/>

2013-01-03
<section begin="2013-01-03"/>Apart from usual work, Andre prioritized a bigger number of previously unprioritized bug reports and worked on a new Bugzilla frontpage (bug report, code patch).<section end="2013-01-03"/>

2013-01-08
<section begin="2013-01-08"/>Apart from usual gruntwork (triaging bug reports, administration tasks) Andre worked on some smaller patches ("Zarro Boogs found" - bug 42467), Show "email" instead of "login" - bug 24992), removed Bugzilla admins by default from Bugzilla's bz_sudoers group (bug 43619), and listed Bugzilla admins on the meta wiki (https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=System_administrators&diff=4983653&oldid=4948113). He also triaged some more unprioritized bug reports.<section end="2013-01-08"/>

2013-01-17
<section begin="2013-01-17"/>Andre Klapper continued decreasing the amount of unprioritized reports in Bugzilla and triaged most of those open reports that had been in ASSIGNED status for more than a year (high likeliness of the assignee having forgotten to reset the status). Information on the different usages of Bugzilla per development team were published. Community members were invited to join the MediaWiki Group Bug Squad. Also, the first translations for How to report a bug we received. Finally, the meaning of the Bugzilla "Priority" field was slightly adjusted to better reflect reality.<section end="2013-01-17"/>

2013-01-22
<section begin="2013-01-22"/>Apart from general triaging, administration work and reducing the amount of open unprioritized reports, an announcement for a bugday on January 29th was published. Furthermore, smaller preparations for the upcoming Datacenter migration have taken place.<section end="2013-01-22"/>

2013-01-23
<section begin="2013-01-23"/>Handling some smaller Data Center move aftermath issues; also clarified "patch-need-review", "patch-reviewed" keyword meaning in Bugzilla to explicitly EXCLUDE patches in Gerrit, so search results are less noisy. "patch-need-review" was historically called "need-review", not implying existence of a patch, but also "this extension needs a review before we could deploy it" and other similar interpretations. Also checked if extensions were deployed in the meantime and made requests block bug 31235 whenever appropriate.<section end="2013-01-23"/>

2013-01-29
<section begin="2013-01-29"/>As part of the usual work, triaging of incoming reports, investigations on various bug reports (especially datacenter migration aftermath, and thumbnail cache purging issues) and threads on various forums (Village Pumps etc.); continued reducing of the backlog of unprioritized tickets; and Bugzilla maintenance (e.g. adding a Bugzilla component for "Wikimedia Planet") were done. Andre went through some "extension deployment" requests to check if still applicable while clarifying the meanings of the "patch-need-review", "patch-reviewed" keyword meaning in Bugzilla. Furthermore, it was discussed how to improve interaction on Bugzilla tickets that need handling by the ops team (which mostly prefers to use the RT bugtracker instead).<section end="2013-01-29"/>

2013-01-monthly
<section begin="2013-01-monthly"/>This month, a first bugday was held, targeting bug reports which had not seen any changes for more than one year, resulting in about 30 tickets being updated. In addition, some cleanup work (decreasing the number of unprioritized bug reports and going through open reports in "ASSIGNED" status for more than a year) took place. Andre Klapper worked on small Bugzilla code changes and published initial information on Bugzilla usage per development team. Community members were invited to join the MediaWiki Group Bug Squad. Furthermore, some problems due to data center migration were investigated, and it was discussed how to improve interaction on Bugzilla tickets that need handling by the Operations team (who mostly prefers to use the RT bugtracker instead).<section end="2013-01-monthly"/>

2013-02-12
<section begin="2013-02-12"/>Andre continued the number of unprioritized bug reports and reached out to several development teams to better understand their use of "Priority" in the Bugzilla issue tracker and who should set it. Furthermore some triaging of ArticleFeedback reports has taken place. Valerie summarized the latest bugday and published an initial version of a describing the life of a bug report by its status changes over time.<section end="2013-02-12"/>

2013-02-19
<section begin="2013-02-19"/>Valerie prepared the next Bugday about Git/Gerrit triage and announced it. Andre continued reducing the number of unprioritized Bugzilla tickets and contacted several development teams, made small improvements to Bugday related documentation on the wiki, and announced the availability of a table on Bugzilla use by development teams. Furthermore, discussions are ongoing about a workflow how to mark fixed tickets as backport candidates in Bugzilla, likely via flags.<section end="2013-02-19"/>

2013-02-26
<section begin="2013-02-26"/>As part of the Weekly QA Goals, a Git/Gerrit Bug Triage day took place. About 25 open reports were retested and/or synchronized with their status in the upstream bugtracker. The Bug day format will be developed further to make it more attractive to new contributors. Valerie helped in testing the Commons Upload app for Android and the mobile browser as part of Mobile QA testing this week. In the context of the OTRS support discussion on the wikimedia-l mailing list, Andre retriaged the open OTRS tickets in Bugzilla, in order to get a better and up-to-date overview of OTRS' bugs. Furthermore, discussions how to mark bug reports which are fixed in the development branch as backport candidates for MediaWiki's stable release branch took place, potentially resulting in the addition of a dropdown menu ("flag") in Wikimedia Bugzilla.<section end="2013-02-26"/>

2013-02-monthly
<section begin="2013-02-monthly"/>As part of the Weekly QA Goals, a Git/Gerrit Bug Triage day took place. About 25 open reports were retested and/or synchronized with their status in the upstream bugtracker. The Bug day format will be developed further to make it more attractive to new contributors. Valerie published an initial version of a describing the life of a bug report by its status changes over time, continued investigating feedback channels and workflows of other bigger free software projects, and also helped testing the Commons Upload app for Android and the mobile browser as part of Mobile QA testing. A table on Bugzilla use by development teams was made available. Furthermore, reachout to several development teams continued to better understand the different bug management needs, and discussions took place about a workflow how to mark fixed tickets as backport candidates in the issue tracker, potentially resulting in the addition of a dropdown menu ("flag") in Bugzilla.<section end="2013-02-monthly"/>

2013-03-12
<section begin="2013-03-12"/>In Bugzilla, a way to mark bugfixes to copy from the development branch to stable branches was introduced to easier identify important bugfixes to include in tarball releases. Valerie analyzed which important Wikimedia feedback channels link to each other and Bugzilla and created a. Andre starting improving the Bugzilla Weekly Report email to the wikitech mailing list to improve its accuracy and usefulness. Improving the usage of Bugzilla and handling of bug reports by specific teams, regular meetings with members of the Operations team, the Release manager and the Language Engineering team have started, with further outreach to take place in the next weeks. Furthermore, bugday to clean up and retest General MediaWiki reports took place which resulted in 38 updated reports and two volunteers who triaged reports for the first time. Some bug reports about Scribunto and Search issues were triaged.<section end="2013-03-12"/>

2013-03-19
<section begin="2013-03-19"/>This week, the number of unprioritized MediaWiki enhancement requests in Bugzilla was decreased further, and a patch to enhance the Weekly Bugzilla Report on wikitech-l mailing list by including a list of urgent issues was written. Furthermore, Valerie published a blog post explaining how to create a good first bug report.<section end="2013-03-19"/>

2013-03-26
<section begin="2013-03-26"/>This week, Valerie ran a bugday on the LiquidThreads extension as part of the QA Weekly Goals. 76 (out of initially 218) open LiquidThreads reports received an update in the last week. Valerie also published a blogpost on how to help Wikimedia squash software bugs. A first IRC Office Hour on Bugzilla and Bug management took place for anybody interested in discussing problems and improvements with Wikimedia's bug management. On most open bug reports with a target milestone set to future MediaWiki version 1.21.0, Andre added reminder comments for developers. In Bugzilla's internal product and component taxonomy, several Mobile application products were merged into a single "Wikipedia App" product and two Search components were merged, both to simplify finding information for developers and reporters. Furthermore, the bug management task list received a major cleanup, making it easier for contributors to find tasks to work on.<section end="2013-03-26"/>

2013-03-monthly
<section begin="2013-03-monthly"/>In Bugzilla, a way to mark bugfixes to copy from the development branch to stable branches was introduced to easier identify important bugfixes to include in tarball releases. Two bugdays took place as part of the QA Weekly Goals: cleaning up and retesting General MediaWiki reports and a bugday concentrating on the LiquidThreads extension. For the latter, 76 out of 218 open reports received updates. Valerie analyzed which important Wikimedia feedback channels link to each other and Bugzilla, and created a. Valerie also published two blogposts explaining how to create a good first bug report and how to help Wikimedia squash software bugs. Andre improved the Bugzilla Weekly Report email to the wikitech mailing list. On most open bug reports with a target milestone set to future MediaWiki version 1.21.0, reminder comments were added for developers. Andre and Valerie also held the first IRC Office Hour on Bugzilla and Bug management for those interested in discussing problems and improvements with Wikimedia's bug management. In Bugzilla's internal product and component taxonomy, several Mobile application products were merged into a single "Wikipedia App" product and two Search components were merged, to simplify finding information for developers and reporters. Also, the bug management task list received a major cleanup, making it clearer what is being worked on and what you can help with.<section end="2013-03-monthly"/>

2013-04-09
<section begin="2013-04-09"/>As part of the QA Weekly Goals, a bugday took place which resulted in about 90 reports Skin and page rendering bug reports being looked at and commented on.

Andre investigated the globalwatchers setting in Bugzilla and the situation of the wikibugs-l@ account which is used for notifications in other places, such as feeds and IRC. In consequence, wikibugs-l@ was removed from the default CC list of many components for security reasons.

To reduce the amount of bugmail for the QA team, the Bugzilla component "Testing Infrastructure" under "Wikimedia" was renamed to "Continuous Integration" and a new component called "Quality Assurance" was added for Browser testing (Selenium) issues.

Over the weekend, Andre investigated thumbnail cache purging issues brought up in the Village Pumps. He also went through open bug reports with "bugsmash" keyword, retested some of them, and removed the keyword from all of them so the keyword could be used again with its original meaning.<section end="2013-04-09"/>

2013-04-16
<section begin="2013-04-16"/>As part of the QA Weekly Goals, the current bugtriaging week is dedicated to checking old reports which have not seen updates for 18 months, with progress being tracked in the corresponding Etherpad. Andre contacted Bugzilla administrators and (after receiving feedback) reduced the number of admins for coordination and security reasons a bit. He also went through the open reports with a 1.21.0 tarball milestone and updated them. Thanks to Dereckson, Wikimedia Bugzilla's "See Also" field now also supports adding GitHub URLs. As part of Bugzilla maintenance, version entries for the corresponding new MediaWiki 1.20.4/1.19.5 releases were added.<section end="2013-04-16"/>