• MarkLinimon
• BugbustingOfficeHours

Office Hours bugbusting topics.

These are MarkLinimon's ideas for specific topics to work on to help focus efforts during any type of bugbusting session.

the information in this page was adapted from the notes from the bugbusting working session in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in May 2019.

Introduction

Conventions

• PR refers to a Bugzilla Problem Report.

• DR refers to a Phabricator Differential Revision.

Let's just term them "issues" from here on.

Note that PRs contain a mix of suggested patches along with what is truly a Problem Report; the DRs are almost all patches.

General Suggestions

• In the past, bugbusting sessions have worked best when a specific goal was set ahead of time: either:
  • a certain subset of issues, or
  • an preselected list of issues.
• We can never "fix all the issues". Trying to do this usually leads to burnout.
• Although it might seem counter-intuitive, the idea "start with the oldest ones" winds up being very frustrating. Some of these issues are complex and have been contentious for years. A better choice is to work backwards.
• When working older issues, be aware that the submitter may respond negatively even though you are trying to help -- just due to the length of time the issue has sat un-addressed. Be prepared to be patient. Nothing is more irrtitating to submitters than closing an issue years after it has been submitted with "oh gosh sorry". Novice bugbusters may wish to leave those for the hardened old-timers.

Working On Existing Issues With Patches

Resources

MarkLinimon note 20240915: the Bugzilla queries below have not yet been converted to the new patch paradigm. See searches for attachments in the mean time.

• Bugzilla

  • all base system PRs with patches (> 600) TODO STALE

  • all base system PRs with patches, but assigned to no one (> 250) TODO STALE

• Phabricator

  • base system DRs (> 1000)

  • all DRs (1000s)

  • needs review (> 1000)

    • I do not know how to get a summary report to get the exact totals.
  • How to search for "DRs with no reviewer?" Does not seem possible.

    • examples: D19690, D17105

How To Find Things To Work On

• Bugzilla
  • PRs with patches (see above)

  • PRs assigned to particular mailing lists, e.g. net@

    • except in a few cases, not granular enough
    • tip: run general report and sort by assignee

  • one or more keywords

    • our list of keywords is sparse; the taxonomy needs to be defined better.

    • see Bugzilla/Keywords for slightly longer explanations.

• Phabricator
  • can create custom queries, but somewhat cumbersome
  • I can't figure out how to query "assigned to no one"
    • Should there be a policy to say "all DRs must a non-null reviewer"? even if it is a group?

Specific ideas for bugbusting office hours

• bugzilla src PRs with patches, assigned to no one, in state "new" (~60) TODO STALE

Working On Other Issues

Resources

• Bugzilla

  • your Bugzilla dashboard

  • all Saved Searches

  • all open PRs tagged with regression

  • Command Line Bug Hunting in FreeBSD (external blog post by TomJones)

    • as of 0.13_1, pybugz no longer needs --connection FreeBSD added.

CategoryHowTo CategoryStale