You forgot to also quote the following from the same resource [1] you`ve referenced: "In general newer bugs should be marked as DUPLICATEs of older bugs, except when the newer bug contains more information (bug description clearer, patch already attached, lots of people already CC'ed, etc.)." Thanks, Eduard ---------- [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Bugzilla/What_to_do_and_wha... On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 2:07 PM, Manuel Smeria <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello again,
I'm reviving this thread since I found some Documentation links from Mozilla which might help:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Bugzilla/ What_to_do_and_what_not_to_do_in_Bugzilla#Resolving_bugs_as_DUPLICATE https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Screening_ duplicate_bugs#Which_is_the_Duplicate
Quote: "Other things being equal, newer bugs should be made DUPLICATES of older bugs, but, more importantly, whichever bug is further along in the process of getting fixed should *not* be made a duplicate. Signs that progess has been made include: [...] * the bug has been analyzed by developers * the bug report has a explanation of how to reliably reproduce the bug and/or it has a simplified testcase"
The scenarios I'm talking about and also the one of http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13728 are perfectly described by the previous quote. Maybe we can also make a decision about this topic and make some changes to the current procedure?
Thanks, Manuel
On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]> wrote:
I guess it's a case by case thing. For example you cannot not change a title like "It not working" or "Massive error on screen", etc.
I don't think we can reach a conclusion on this topic. Some issues are describing the cause, while other are describing the effect. Some causes could have multiple effects. Sometimes you cannot find the issue that was reported before, some issue might be closed not by the book, etc. Since we document in written the new functionality we add in the Release Notes, any issue we have will be mainly dedicated to devs, not end-users. Having clearer issue IMO is nicer (since cuts a next step to read all the description and the comments), but sure, the language needs to be moderately technical and be understood by the majority.
Thanks, Caty
On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:
On 27 Sep 2016, at 11:38, Manuel Smeria <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
Marius summed up pretty good exactly what I'm thinking. Users are not usually technical, so they will report the bug as they
see
it: the button doesn't work, the color is grey instead of blue, etc. If the developer that investigates the issue finds the cause for it, he can rephrase it using technical words inside the Git commit or even inside a Jira comment. AFAIK the search function in Jira also works for comments.
So this would mean, not changing the title of the issue. Because if you change the title you also need to change the description or you have a sync issue with a description not matching the title (this was the case for the issue that led to this discussion).
When you search in jira (I use JIRA client), it highlight the search terms in the title for example, giving more weight to the title.
Having 2 issues makes it twice as likely to find the issue you’re looking for (from a user pov or from a tech pov).
But yes this could be considered minor and we could decide to not touch the title nor the description and simply add some comment explaining the real cause.
Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Manuel
On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 9:28 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Eduard Moraru < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi, Manuel,
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Manuel Smeria <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello Devs, > > I would like to propose a new best practice for the way we close issues as > Duplicate. > > As an example I've reported this issue: > http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13728 which was later closed as a > Duplicate to http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13729. > > From my perspective, this is not correct since the issue I reported is > valid from an user's POV. > I would have preferred that my issue was renamed and that developers would > have added some technical information as a comment to it if they wanted to > do so. > It just doesn't make any sense to me to close a perfectly valid issue as a > Duplicate just to create another one that has a more technically correct > summary and description. > > It also doesn't make sense to close the original issue as a Duplicate to a > duplicate issue :) (pun intended) > I see things like this: my issue's description is a use-case of the issue > later reported by Edy, so if anything, Edy's issue should be closed as a > Duplicate to mine and not the other way around. >
As you have explained it yourself, the issue you have created is a *usecase*, a *manifestation* of a real problem. That is why we have identified the real problem (the "cause") and I have created an issue to specifically address it and fix it, linking your manifestation issue to the actual problem that caused it. A developer will work to fix the actual problem, and not its many manifestations. This way, in the issues tracker (jira), we will have recorded both the actual problem and one (or many) of its manifestations so that, when a user (or even a dev) does a search for a manifestation, it will be easy to find the actual problem he is having (manifestation), but also the real problem that caused it (and when it was fixed).
The users will always report the manifestation of a problem. They report what they see. They don't investigate. Following your practice would mean closing all user-reported issues as duplicate once the developer finds the real cause. I don't think this is right. Moreover, AFAIK the best practice when reporting issues, even for developers, is to describe the manifestation in the issue title. What's important is to understand how the users are affected. The developer can look for details (like the cause of the problem) in the comments.
Thanks, Marius
If we were to modify the manifestation issue or simply add a
comment, we
would lose all the above mentioned information, which would not be ideal, so, instead, even if it breaks a bit the chronology of things, we mark the manifestation issue as a duplicate of the "cause" issue, which makes perfect sense when you look at it this way. Fixing the cause will automatically fix all reported manifestations which were clearly marked as duplicates of the cause.
So, in practice, when there are more opened issues that are clearly duplicates, the one with the most information and that best identifies the real source of the problem is left opened, while all the others which are addressing manifestations get closed as duplicates of the previous one, even if that issue happened to be reported later in the chronology.
> > One scenario where I think issues dated previously should be closed as > Duplicate is if the new issue has already been fixed. For example when a > Developer doesn't notice an older issue and starts working on the new one > instead of closing the new one as a Duplicate and work on the older one. > There might be more, feel free to add them to this thread. >
Yes, we do that already.
> > So, what I propose is that we don't close original issues as Duplicate > unless it falls into the category previously described or some other > exceptions that I can't think of now and might occur. >
As I mentioned, the "original" issue is less valuable both to users and to devs as an identified "cause" issue, which really needs fixing. "Original" issues still offer value to users when searching or reading release notes, but that`s as far as it can go.
Does this make sense?
Thanks, Eduard
> > Thanks, > Manuel
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