[webkit-dev] Bug life cycle

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Nov 12, 2005, at 6:51 AM, Joost de Valk wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> today, while talking on #webkit, i got two questions which both  
> should be answered in the bug life cycle document on the WebKit  
> page as well, in my humble opinion. To be able to do that, i'd like  
> to get some consensus on them.
>
> The first one, brought up by Alexey Proskuryakov (ap), is this:  
> when a bug can't be reproduced anymore but has been confirmed at  
> one point in time, what to do with it? My answer for this would be  
> to close it as "WORKSFORME" and not as "FIXED", since you don't  
> know what fixed it. Ideally we would create a new resolution for  
> this, something like "FIXED WITHOUT SOLUTION" or something like  
> that, have you people perhaps got any thoughts on this?

How about "PRESUMED FIXED". I also wish we could get the  
ALLCAPSSINGLEWORD style out of the resolutions. Not sure how hard  
this is to do without hacking the database. Something that is  
believed fixed by an unknown change is indeed different than  
something that couldn't be reproduced at all, although "WORKSFORME"  
arguably could cover both bases. "PRESUMED FIXED" would indicate to  
the verifier that they must verify with a more recent version, and  
would indicate to integrators that if they want to ship the fix on a  
branch version, they have to hunt for it.

> The second one: a bug that is fixed goes to verified, and to closed  
> when it's in an Apple release of WebKit. However, as Mitz Pettel  
> pointed out, we have bugs as well which are regressions from  
> previous versions, these will, when fixed, never get into a  
> release. I propose that we close them anyhow, since they should  
> have a keyword which indicates that it was a regression.

Eventually a release ships which would have had the regression but  
also had the fix. But it's true that it would be unclear how to test  
for that release. In the apple-internal bug tracker, there is no  
clusing step separate from verifying - a bug that has been verified  
ends up in state closed. So I think from that perspective we are not  
too concerned about the distinction.

Regards,
Maciej