Edgewall Software

Version 48 (modified by sid, 17 years ago) ( diff )

Add in cboos comments from the trac-dev mailing list about how to help

Trac Project Ticket Triage

This page lists guidelines and conventions used within the Trac project for ​triage of tickets.

As a matter of fact, we happen to mainly focus on the Milestone information to decide whether a ticket has been triaged or not. Therefore, still to be triaged tickets can be found in queries specifying an unset milestone, like query:status!=closed&milestone= or report:20.

How to help?

First, there is a good deal of tickets which are not yet triaged. Anyone with some knowledge about the Trac project can help us to apply the triaging rules, in order to detect duplicate requests, eliminate invalid tickets and identify the real issues by assigning them a milestone.

For the tickets that are waiting for user feedback, anyone can help as well: close tickets which haven't received the requested feedback since a few months or further process them if they received some feedback.

Finally, among the valid tickets, ​many are categorized as defects. Those should probably get the most attention or be recategorized as enhancements if they are not real defects.

Milestone

  • If resolution is fixed, the Milestone should be set, otherwise it should be blank.
  • Don't assign a milestone without a reason or patch.
  • Don't modify a milestone as anonymous and without a reason.
  • If adding an enhancement request ticket, don't set the milestone to a bugfix only release (e.g. 0.10.5).
  • If the feature is more or less a blue sky idea, then use 2.0
  • If the bug or feature seems doable in a reasonable time frame, but doesn't seem to fit in the current schedule, use 1.0
  • If there's no milestone corresponding to a past or future Trac release which seems to be adequate, but the ticket is nevertheless valid and has to be processed further, then the milestone can be set to not applicable. This rule is needed as long as we don't have a better way to distinguish among triaged and non-triaged tickets.

Status and Resolution

fixed
is used when the resolution of the ticket can be linked to some change in the repository, a code change, a primary documentation fix, a contribution script added, etc. For ticket type task, fixed is used even if there was no trackable change in the repository/documentation.
worksforme
the problem reported was not really a problem; the requested feature is already implemented or can be obtained in a different way
wontfix
the problem reported is not really Trac's problem; the requested feature won't be implemented because we don't think it fits in the scope of the core of Trac, or the feature is implemented as a plugin.
  • Note: In some cases however (e.g. #2611), we let the issue open even if the cause of the issue is not directly Trac's fault, so that workarounds and user experience can be collected.
  • Note: If an API change is required to get a feature to work (that is intended to be implemented as a plugin), then a new ticket could be opened with the requested API changes. If it's not very clear what that change should be, it is preferable to keep the request for change next to the use case (i.e. keep that ticket opened for the purpose of the API change).
invalid
the ticket was a test ticket, intended for another Trac, etc.
duplicate
there's already another ticket about the same issue
  • If marking as duplicate, include referring ticket #s in both duplicate and duplicated tickets.
    • In duplicate ticket: This ticket is duplicate of #1234
    • In original request: #2345 has been marked as duplicate of this ticket
  • We usually let open the ticket which contains the most up-to-the-point discussion about the issue, the one which contains an appropriate patch, or other than that, the oldest ticket.

And also, don't close or reopen a ticket without a reason.

Ticket Title

  • [PATCH] prepended - if you are the original ticket creator, then adding [PATCH] to the ticket title indicates a patch attached to ticket for review and integration that works for you.

Ticket Type

When the ticket is neither about something that requires a modification to the documentation or the code, use the task type.

Ticket Description

Only administrators can edit ticket descriptions. They are only edited to fix formatting errors, not the actual content. Occasionally, we may also add editorial notes, in order to not spread misleading information, e.g. #4297 or to summarize the current status of a long running issue, e.g. #4132 or #2611. In all cases, it should be quite clear from the formatting what's coming from the original author and what has been annotated afterwards.

Keywords

The purpose of keywords is to be able to generate pertinent and focused TracQueries, so use them appropriately.

Development Notes

(section contains notes about the development of this document)

Policy for closing tickets for outdated Trac releases

  • eblot: Following the update Matt did on #4222, I think we also need to document what is / would be the policy for outdated Trac releases (criteria to declare as wontfix, etc.)

Policy for closing tickets

(suggestions subjecting ticket-close-policies)

lazaridis:

  • User intentions should be taken in account
  • Avoid closing tickets without a comment of the reporter
    • This is especially true if the reporter is an active contributor
  • Take care of the "wontfix/worksforme-arrogance"
  • be open minded, and accept that the existent processes have some deficits (for sure there are documentation deficits, that's why this document was initiated) see #4174

anonymous:

  • core developers have final authority to close tickets
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