Bug Triage processes need some improvement and automation...

[Robert Park]

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 3:45 PM, AG Restringere <ag.restringere at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question: Who's triaging the bug right now?

Answer: You are *massively* overthinking the complexity of the bug
triage process.

> Most of the time what
> stops me from working on a bug is that I can't immediately whose managing
> that bug and what they intend on doing with it.  The Bug Triage person's
> intent is very important, because I don't know if that person intends on
> triaging the bug completely or they're just handling it temporarily and
> waiting for someone to finish it for them.

I think you are absolutely 100% safe to assume in all cases that
everybody is just handling it temporarily and it's safe for you to do
the triage work on any bug you happen to find.

This isn't like development work where if two people start writing
code at the same time, then their branches will have merge conflicts
when they go to submit their work. Bug triage is just a simple matter
of "can I reproduce this? No? Set it to Incomplete and ask for more
information then." It's quick, easy, anybody can do it, and we rely on
the graciousness of volunteers. We don't want to burden them with
extra meaningless paperwork here.

There's no real measurable harm from two people triaging the same bug
at the same time.

> We can pretty easily know via the "Assigned To:" field which Developer,
> Maintainer or Packager is fixing a bug but we still don't have a field that
> tells us which Bug Control/Squad people are triaging that bug and what
> they're doing with it.

Trying to keep a 'Managed By' field up-to-date on our already-strained
volunteer resources is just pointless busywork that will discourage
people from contributing in helpful ways.

> Concerns:
>
> How can it be made more obvious which Bug Control/Squad members are working
> on a bug?
> How can some sort of status like "triaging" be made so it's known wether
> it's being actively triaged?
> What filters can be put into Launchpad so a person can find bugs that are
> currently not being triaged by anyone on the team and whether it's being
> actively triaged?

Don't worry about any of that, just triage the bug as if you are the
#1 guy who can make a difference, because you are.