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= Duplicate check when filing new tickets

A '''new duplicate ticket''' is a new ticket that has been posted before. For the background into the issues surrounding new duplicate tickets, see the following discussions:
 * [http://groups.google.com/group/trac-dev/browse_thread/thread/d07c7ed673eb170e NewTicket duplicates discussion]
 * [http://groups.google.com/group/trac-dev/browse_thread/thread/2db506098b5b6276 ticket duplicate discussion]
 * [#MostFrequentDuplicatesPlugin] proposal
 * [http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/DuplicateTicketSearchPlugin DuplicateTicketSearchPlugin on trac-hacks]

Good implementations of checking new duplicate tickets are:
 * [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Ubuntu LaunchPad]. See screenshots below.
 * [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask Stackoverflow]. After you type in a question, the area immediately below the title (summary, in Trac) is populated with a list of questions that possibly match based on the text. This would fit into the existing Trac UI fairly easily.

== Display an overview, and two links "report bug", "ask question"

[[Image(01-bug-overview.png)]]

== Show frequently reported bugs, and allow enter title

[[Image(02-most-frequently-reported.png)]]

== Display possible duplicates, and allow enter bug, or notify security team

[[Image(03-really-enter-bug.png)]]

== !MostFrequentDuplicatesPlugin

Here is an idea for a plugin that could be used for doing semi-automated duplicate checking.
It is a more automated version of what is described in the MostFrequentDuplicates page, by using the information collected there ''before'' new tickets get created.

We could use a bit more structure in that page, for associating patterns to tickets. Examples:

 Pattern:: HTMLParseError: bad end tag
 Duplicate of:: #4365
 Note:: related to a SilverCity bug

 Pattern:: PyGIT.py.*cannot concatenate 'str' and 'NoneType' objects
 Duplicate of:: #6976
 Note:: This is a bug in the TH:GitPlugin for Trac on nonexistent paths, see TH:ticket:2671

Before ticket creation, the ticket description is scanned for the available (multi-line) patterns and if a match is found, a validation warning should be returned (see [source:tags/trac-0.11/trac/ticket/api.py@#L127]). This will prevent ticket creation and show a warning which can display the duplicate ticket and the associated note. See also the [source:tags/trac-0.11/trac/wiki/interwiki.py InterWiki] module for hints about retrieving data from a Wiki page.