QA/How to Improve Bugzilla

For quite a while we had a very comfortable solution with our own bugzilla instance. But our project is growing, and we have to check whether this solution still is optimum for us or whether we will have to think about a change.

Please help to complete this page. It's a Wiki, please do not suggest what should be added, simply add the contents. Only if you are not sure concerning your ideas start a discussion on the Discussion page.

Allow logic sort additionally to alphabetical

 * Why (Example): Components currently are sorted alphabetically, It might be useful to have some Groups like "Libo-Components" A-Z, "Software Module related" A-Z, "Others" A-Z
 * Examples:
 * How:
 * Related Bugs:
 * Related Bugs:

search Version Picker (and others)

 * Why: If there are lots of items in a picker (see AOOo Version picker) it might be annoying to find the required Version. In AOOo they have the advantage that they now started "AOOo" versions, simple typing "A" brings you to the first of those items. Our current numbering system does not allow such tricks (excepted for "unspecific"). So it might be useful if normal Browser search also works for the pickers or if when picker list is open typing of some letters will show up the first item containing that typed string.
 * Examples:
 * [ ]
 * [ ]
 * How:
 * Related Bugs:

True version tracking

 * Why: Bugzilla is not aware of the various branches and starting from which commit (or version) the bug is fixed in each branch. Having a bug tracking system that tracks this information allows much more easy / cleaner querying. For example: show me all bugs still open in version 3.5.4, or in branch libreoffice-3-5. Ideally, it would also keep track of the decision to fix or not *per* *branch*, so that we can issue requests like "show me all bugs open in libreoffice-3-5 that we have not decided not to fix in 3.5. This would also allow e.g. to show a user reporting a bug the (relevant) bugs fixed since the version (s)he is reporting against, with something like "These bugs have been fixed since the release of 3.5.3; please look them over and see if your bug is in there".
 * Examples:
 * The Debian bug tracking system tracks "versions where fixed and versions where bug found". Most probably not adequate for LibreOffice for other reasons, though.
 * How:
 * This would need switching to another bug tracking system than bugzilla.
 * I am not sure - basically that should be possible using Bugzilla Tags and Flags -- Rainer Bielefeld 2012-06-04T17:22:10 (CEST)
 * Bug sightings feature dealing with branches is planned: 🇲🇿
 * Enable and use "Target Milestone" field in bugzilla, but this needs to prevent abuse from users (see )

Associate User with NEEDINFO State

 * Problem: If a bug is NEEDINFO state, the name of the info provider is sometimes well hidden in the many comments. Some people even forget to explain who should provide the information.
 * Possible solution: If you set NEEDINFO state, you should be able to define the name of the info provider in extra filed. It should not be the "assigned" field because the info provided would have problem to assign the bug back to the requestor.
 * Custom field displayed only when bug is in NEEDINFO status. Problem: you can't create custom username fields out-of-the-box.


 * Examples: This works well in [|Novell bugzilla]

Hide obsolete Version numbers for new Reports

 * Why: New reporters generally will report for their current version, so all the old Versions might be only worrying. But to define the Version with what the problem started the old Versions still will be required after the original report has been done.
 * How: Currently there will be a possibility to suppress old Versions in the guided forms of bugzilla.

Appropriate Bugzilla Help

 * Why: Currently Bugzilla Status help is for "New Workflow", where (for example) Status NEW does not exist. Currently there is no interest to change Workflow, and Help seems to be only available for new one.
 * How: Help of obsolete Version?

Show warning if users change version to a later one

 * Why: Unexperienced users often change Version wrongly () to a later version because they find out that a bug still exists in the latest LibO version. It costs time to change back to appropriate most early version where the but appeared
 * How: It seems that that can be done easily with some additional JavaScript in the pages.
 * Related Bugs:

stuff from the old migration page

 * Change status to ASSIGNED when someone is assigned to address the bug.


 * Enable whining system (it's only half-enabled on FDO) (bfoman)
 * (what does this entail?) - (qubit)
 * this was marked as FIXED in, but probably wasn't configured in the cron job - ; as for the feature itself - please read https://bugs.freedesktop.org/docs/en/html/whining.html
 * Some level of Interoperability with the Ask site.


 * Ability to open/present files from archives
 * So if someone uploads a zip of 5 docx files, have a web interface to show those and allow downloading them individually
 * Side-by-side comparison
 * It's really helpful to have side-by-side screenshots to compare how a doc renders
 * Creating a 2-up (or 4-up, 6-up, etc..) should be done programmatically, and save human time
 * Relationships between attachments
 * have a way to indicate that X is a screenshot of Y when opened with version Z on OS A. (where X, Y are both attachments)
 * Relationships could allow us to upload the files first, then to say "make a 2-up of X and Y".
 * Ideally, someone else could come along and say "and make it a 3-up with Z" (with a history to allow undos, of course :-)


 * A plugin to transfer bugs between bugtrackers
 * so if www bugs end up bugzilla, we can just transfer them other, rather than resolving them and asking the reporter to re-file
 * Add a field like "Latest Confirmation on:" to prevent users changing the "other version field" to be changed, AOO has this, see for instance

Stuff from QA/Projects/Ideas/Self-Hosted Bugtracker + talk page

 * Master bug description, which serves as the single description the assignee can look at to get the whole picture of the reported bug. This should be editable by qualified personnel after the fact.
 * Better user management (banning, suspending, warnings)
 * NEEDINFO - when a user posts something to a bug in NEEDINFO status, ask if they want to move the bug back to UNCONFIRMED ("have you provided all information requested")
 * Match our bots ability to do things like and have a link appear (uniformity of our systems)
 * CC'ed members should flag their subject (vs. if someone adds themselves to the bug) - this is so devs can easily filter their emails
 * Versions - three distinct versions "oldest" "latest tested" and "branch" -- branch should be automated based on either oldest or latest
 * Confidential Files -- ability to automatically remove confidential information (properties and text) if someone checks a box - but we should make it difficult to do for a user to dissuade users from just submitting confidential files every time
 * Integration of ASK and our bug tracker -- some way to automatically move a comment/report on ASK to a bug on libreoffice (and visa versa)
 * being able to change status on the upload attachment page without assigning the bug to you https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234530
 * being able to list bugs that has only been commented on by the reporter - no other user has commented on the bug except the author https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121335
 * means of downloading the bugzilla html file and all its attachment at one go - useful for offline bug triaging
 * when status is changed from unconfirmed to needinfo, bugzilla shouldnt set 'ever confirmed' to 1
 * it shouldn't make mistakes with bug auto referencing like in bug 80179
 * better handling of emailed comments - eliminate html email version of comment (bug 80060 comment 2 attachment, bug 80188 comment 5 attachment), and eliminate useless 0 or 1 byte attachments from email replied comments (bug 80188 comment 6, bug 80060 comment 3) and trim quoted reply text (i.e. bug 80188 comments 5, bug 79918 comment 3, bug 79574 comment 2) similar to launchpad.net
 * have tooltip for Version and Status similar to tooltips for Product, Component, etc
 * have Whiteboard link to wiki
 * have statuses that can only be particular users - bug reporter (unconfirmed), QA team (new, needinfo, resolved [invalid, wontfix, duplicate, worksforme, notabug, notourbug]), and developers (everything)
 * bug reporters shouldn't be allowed to reply to emails sent to them from the bug tracker, and the email shouldn't contain email addresses of commenters
 * "Bug Heat" - a good algorithm to judge how important a bug is based on multiple factors

Aside build-in feature of Bugzilla counting duplicates at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/duplicates.cgi one can think about implementing something like Launchpad algorithm - https://dev.launchpad.net/Bugs/BugHeat#Algorithm


 * Ability to distinguish easily between contributor (especially developer) and "regular user" - so we know if person X changes status and they are a developer (or QA member) to not mess with the bug

This can be done using icons for groups - https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/docs/en/html/groups.html. Just create developers, qa, etc. groups, set an icon, add the people and it will be displayed along the username.


 * easy access to a bug submitter's list of submitted bugs from the first entry of a bug report

The question is whether NEEDINFO status should be still used. I'd rather propose UNCONFIRMED status with NEEDINFO flag set (which is searchable) along with Needinfo extension used at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org. It provides Needinfo menu under the comment field, where other/reporter/assignee/qa contact/myself is easily accessible and special logic for this type of flag. More about flags https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/docs/en/html/flags.html.

Source available at https://github.com/mozilla/webtools-bmo-bugzilla/extensions/Needinfo


 * have statuses that can only be particular users - bug reporter (unconfirmed), QA team (new, needinfo, resolved [invalid, wontfix, duplicate, worksforme, notabug, notourbug]), and developers (everything)

Apart from basic Group Controls this can be done customizing who can change what according to https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/docs/en/html/cust-change-permissions.html. Best would be to create Bugzilla extension, like on bugzilla.mozilla.org - see the code examples starting at line 350 https://github.com/mozilla/webtools-bmo-bugzilla/blob/master/extensions/BMO/Extension.pm#L350.