Want to help out with the Fedora Project, but can't code a lick? Well
fear not my dear friends. There are many ways you can help the cause
and today I am pleased to announce a brand new way you can help
contribute. Join the Fedora BugZappers!
Who are the BugZappers?
The BugZappers, (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers) are the
official triage team of the Fedora Project. The main goal of the team
is to triage, or do a first pass, of bugs in Bugzilla and ensure that a
number of parameters are satisfactorily met. Basically what that means
is that the BugZappers will go through bugs as they come in and try and
make sure the bugs are valid (i.e. not a duplicate), sane and contain
enough information to be escalated to developers. If you have ever
reported a bug and wondered why it took so long to get fixed, well then
BugZappers is the right project to join.
Tell Me More!
The BugZappers aim to be the primary line of defense for Fedora Quality
Assurance (QA). The BugZappers will begin running Bug Day events, every
alternating week, usually on Wednesdays. Bug Day events are when the
team gets together to concentrate our focus on certain subsections of
the project which need work. Triage should continue on though, and
remember kids, "Every day should be a Bug Day!"
So, if you are tired of hearing complaints about things not working,
pieces being broken or just plain want to help Fedora be the best dang
Fedora it can be, then join the BugZappers team and help the developers
make the most of their coding time. It's fun, it's easy, you don't need
much experience to start and we are willing to show you the path of the
righteous, should you choose to accept this mission.
What's in it for me?
Glad you asked. First of all there is candy. OK, so there is no candy,
but there is free stuff. The team is working on some giveaways and run
contests during Bug Day events. You also get to work on triaging things
that annoy you first, so your problems get fixed sooner; kernel problems
anyone? Also, a wise man once said, much fame and fortune come to he
who close many bugs. OK, it really wasn't a wise man buy you get the
point.
How Do I Join?
Step 1: Sign up for the mailing list at:
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-triage-list
Step 2: Join us on IRC
We live in #fedora-bugs on Freenode
Step 3: Read/Modify/Enhance the wiki
Our wiki is located at http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers .
Additionally, we have more information available on the wiki at:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsReports and
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs .
More content will be added as we get the project off the ground and
moving.
Also, be sure to look for our announcement of the first Bug Day event
coming soon to an Inbox near you!
Thanks,
Jack
Greetings!
I had a few ideas which I hope will be helpful to the Fedora Bug Squad, so
I thought I would run them by everybody and get a discussion going to see
exactly how helpful these ideas might be.
1: Dedicated Fedora Bugzilla
Should we copy all the Fedora bugs, incl. bugs for the Fedora Directory
Server, to a new host, e.g. bugs.fedoraproject.org or
bugzilla.fedoraprojhect.org? I was thinking this might be one way to
minimize strain on our Bugzilla servers. I know this could be a very time
consuming project, so we should only do this if it is worth the hassle.
2: Add An "Expired" Tag To Bugzilla
Should both the Redhat and Fedora Bugzillas have a new tag added to the
system, called "Expired" (or whatever name we wish) for all tickets which
have had x amount of days with no activity, instead of simply calling it
"Closed"? I was thinking this might allow the bug squad to more easily
find unresolved issues, esp. long-awaited features such as encrypted
filesystems.
3: Old Bug Deletion/Archival
Should we delete bugs that have been closed for x amount of time, esp. the
ones that we will likely never again need to reference, such as fc6 and
earlier bugs? If deletion is not an option, perhaps we should setup a
legacy server to store these old bugs, as it will be hardly used and make
more resources available for new Fedora bugs? If we can use it, perhaps
bugs.fedoralegacy.org or bugzilla.fedoralegacy.org?
4: Contingency Plan
I know Bugzilla is a very important part of our infrastructure, and
without it we'd be FUBAR, so maybe we can make a duplicate copy of the
bugzilla server on a test machine and make the proposed changes on this
test machine first? I always prefer having a separate development
environment, since borking something during development won't make any
changes to a production machine. Maybe we can do a MySQL dump and write a
script that would make the changes for us automatically? For example, if
we were using a MySQL script to make the changes:
SELECT * FROM bugs WHERE daysopen > 90 etc.
Perhaps this script we write can simply give us statistics first, such as
how many bugs would be set to "Expired" or moved to the legacy Bugzilla
before making any changes. Then we can mod the script to do the real
thing once everyone approves of the new setup.
Hats off to everyone on the bug squad!
Regards,
Riley F. Marquis III
Senior Analyst - TCS Research
