# XSF / How to triage bugs

Cyril Brulebois
`<kibi@debian.org>`

## Packaging bugs or upstream bugs?

It’d be nice to get all upstream bugs tagged as such (`upstream` tag), forwarded upstream (which means the bugzilla instance on http://bugs.freedesktop.org/ for most packages), and marked as such.

A mail to `control@bugs.debian.org` would look like:

    tag X upstream
    forwarded X https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=Y
    thanks

Then `bts-link` comes into play and helps us tracking upstream status, which is pretty nice to have.

## Usertags

Another feature of the BTS is usertagging. That lets people keep track of additional tags, “attached” to a given mail address. For XSF, that’s `debian-x@lists.debian.org`.

The list of all usertagged bugs can be seen on the following page; the list of all used usertags is at the bottom, in the form.
→ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-x%40lists.debian.org

Let’s give some examples:

- `i810`, `i915`: helps triaging `-video-intel` bugs depending on the chipset.

- `r200`, `r300`: ditto for `-video-ati`.

- `xset`, `xrandr`: helps triaging `x11-xserver-utils` bugs depending on the affected tool (like other `x11-*` packages, that’s a bundle of teeny tiny apps).

- `squeeze-candidate`: helps keeping a list of bugs we’d like to get fixed in a point release (through a stable update).

- `needs-forwarding`: of course, it’d be nice to have all upstream bugs reported upstream, but some might need special attention (e.g. security bugs).

Here’s an example of URL, for the last tags:
→ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-x%40lists.debian.org&tag=squeeze-candidate
→ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-x%40lists.debian.org&tag=needs-forwarding

By the way one should keep an eye on the list of found/fixed versions since those bugs are likely marked as resolved (in `unstable` or `experimental`), but might still affect a stable release.

To list the bugs marked `squeeze-candidate` but not `squeeze-accepted`:
→ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-x%40lists.debian.org&tag=squeeze-candidate&exclude=tag:squeeze-accepted

## Categories

The BTS has yet another feature which can help, categories. That’s based on usertags as well, but one has to use the package address (`$package@packages.debian.org`), so that’s package-specific rather than team-specific.

Categories are documented on the wiki, and they would probably be welcome in the `intel` and `ati` cases above, as well as in the “multiple tools in a single bundle” cases… An example of what we could achieve is the devscripts bug page (it takes some time to load, plenty of bugs).

Needed steps for that to happen:

- create usercategories.

- move usertags from `debian-x@lists.debian.org` to `$package@packages.debian.org`, probably using the `bts select` command to get the list over which to iterate.

- profit!

To move the usertags, something like that should do the job:

    # Adding usertags:
    user $package1@packages.debian.org
    usertag X xset
    usertag Y xrandr
    user $package2@packages.debian.org
    usertag Z i810

    # Removing tags which are no longer needed:
    user debian-x@lists.debian.org
    usertag X - xset
    usertag Y - xrandr
    usertag Z - i810