Phabricator/versus Bugzilla

Phabricator is deprecating Bugzilla for bug reporting. All the Bugzilla reports will be migrated, and the process for reporting and managing bugs will be basically the same. However, some things will change.

Instead of trying to use Phabricator exactly how you use Bugzilla, we recommend you to get used to how Phabricator works. You can learn and experiment at https://phab-01.wmflabs.org/.

Some of the features described below are planned but not implemented today. In these cases you can follow the link to the task to learn about their current status.

Improvements
Phabricator comes with many improvements over Bugzilla.

Interface

 * The desktop UI looks contemporary and friendly to newcomers, even non-technical.
 * Most features are mobile friendly as well!
 * Interacting via email is possible, also for non-registered users ( T52 ).

User account
Phabricator/Help
 * Log in with your Wikimedia (SUL) or wikitech.wikimedia.org (LDAP) credentials (T346).
 * Your email address is finally private.

Task-centric environment

 * Tasks can be bugs, and they can be tasks. No more "this is not a bug, doesn't belong here" or "this report is being tracked in Mingle/Trello"
 * Reporters, developers, designers, and product managers use the same tool to discuss bugs/features and report progress.
 * We get project boards (example) and mockups with notes (example).
 * Explicit titles of tasks, code reviews, and mockups related to the task, without needing to click or memorize numbers.
 * You can also see in which column/status of the project board the task is currently.

Flexible taxonomy

 * Projects are like tags or keywords; there is no rigid tree structure.
 * Tasks can be assigned to multiple projects or to none. No more fights to decide where should a bug live when there are several candidates.

Creating tasks
Phabricator/Help
 * Simple form for newcomers with only title, project, CCed users, and description. If you want more, join the Triagers.
 * Type-ahead to select projects, instead of having to browse products/components to find the destination.
 * The description ("comment 0") of a task can be edited by multiple users (with history/diffs available) to evolve the task and summarize long discussions.
 * A toolbar and a specific markup allows formatting of descriptions.

Commenting
Phabricator/Help
 * Enjoy auto-saved comments while you type.
 * A toolbar and a specific markup allows formatting of comments.
 * You can add files and inline images to comments with a simple drag & drop.
 * You can edit your own comments (with history).
 * You can hide your own comments (admins can make them visible or delete them for good).
 * No mid-air collision when someone adds a comment while you are writing yours.

Notifications
Phabricator/Help
 * Web notifications show activity relevant to the tasks you are subscribed to.
 * With Herald you can create notifications based on queries, e.g. "email me when someone mentions (your regexp here)".

Calls to action

 * Tasks needing triaging appear at the top of lists (including search results) and in personal dashboards of the members of the affected projects.

Permissions

 * We can decide who can create projects, rather than only let a few administrators do so.
 * We can have specific teams with specific permissions whose members could add new members, rather than relying on admins only.

Missing features
Bugzilla users might miss some features that Phabricator still lacks, or is not pursuing. For more details, check T22: Identify features Bugzilla users would miss in Phabricator and related blocker tasks. We have reported some of these features upstream; check our Phabricator.org project.

The most important features Phabricator misses today are:
 * No way for an admin to hide comments of others (T84, upstream)

Not part of Phabricator, but requires porting:
 * T131: Plan to set up IRC bots to behave like the wikibugs bot
 * T28: Support Phabricator in Metrics Grimoire

Remarkable / under discussion:
 * T109: Phabricator is assistive technology–unfriendly (upstream, investigating the impact)
 * T45: Suggestions of possible duplicates when creating a new bug/task (upstream)
 * T96: Lack of dependency tree (i.e. tracking bugs) (upstream)
 * T67: RSS/Atom feeds (upstream, not in Phabricator's plans)

Considerations

 * Offering a simpler UI, some advanced actions require an extra click.
 * T95: Use ElasticSearch backend for Maniphest to get stemming (e.g. searching for "delete" should also find "deleting" and "deletion")
 * Will users find their way with type-ahead for assigning tasks to projects? See T27. There is also a page listing all projects in Phabricator but it is not linked from the task creation form.

Migration
We plan to announce the date of the Bugzilla migration at least two weeks in advance, as soon as the day can be confirmed.

Bugzilla in read-only mode
Bugzilla will be switched to read-only mode as soon as the actual migration starts. We will keep it available as is during an indeterminate period of time, just in case.

Bugzilla data not migrated
For Bugzilla users, personal tags, bug report aliases, and votes cannot be transfered as Phabricator offers no similar concepts, and URLs for saved searches in Bugzilla will not work anymore as Phabricator does not offer passing URL parameters in a similar way to Bugzilla (also see T40).