1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm Solveig. 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Here you have my contact info. 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I use Free Software and especially Debian since quite some time now 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I also contribute to Tails 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so my interests are in privacy… 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 No? Yes? Do you hear me? 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I do some non-developer things 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and in Debian I found a way to contribute without coding 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 or maintaining packages which is to triage bugs. 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Bug triaging, it helps, 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it's kind of non visible but it helps Debian as a whole 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because maintainers don't always have the time to deal 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 with all their bug reports, 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 some packages have a lot of bug reports, 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 like the kernel or Xorg. 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Also, it's a good way to improve the package quality. 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When some packages have a lot of bugs open against them, 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it can make it harder for the maintainers to know which ones are 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 solvable, actionable, and they can get a bit over their head. 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So when you triage bugs, you help everybody have a better experience 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 with Debian. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, you want to do it. 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 First, it's easy. 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You don't need to learn any new tool supposing you already know 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 how to read and write e-mail. 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So that's a low threshold to start. 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's very rewarding, the maintainers are happy when you help them, 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 even if you don't touch their packages, 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 if you sort their bugs, they'll be happy and the users who submitted them 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 will be happy that somebody looked at them 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so it can be very joyful. 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Also, you search random bugs for packages you don't necessarily know, 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so you learn about a lot of software in Debian and 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 some of them are really really surprising and you… 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "Wha? What does this do?" and that's kind of fun. 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And of course, it saves kittens. 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 On this page, there's a… 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The bug triage page is a howto page I made some years ago, with tips 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and this part, especially, has a list of teams that added themselves 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so that they want you to help sort their bugs. 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Those are the teams I worked with, they're really really nice, 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 they don't bite. 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They will let you know if you did an error, 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 they will answer your questions, you can work together. 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I don't recommend closing random bugs. 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you go and touch packages from people you have not warned 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 or who are not willing to have somebody touch their bugs, 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you might have backfire. 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To start, I think it's good to go packages that you know people are happy 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 if you help with. 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The first tool to triage bugs is UDD. 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I don't know if you've ever tried it, the interface is really great. 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Here, that's UDD. 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So it's a bit arid like this, but 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it allows you to select many many types of packages, 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we can see that later. 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Then you can choose a team or other criteria 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and when you're happy about your criteria, you search. 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It will give you a list of packages corresponding to your criteria 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and you can select some more info you want listed here. 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, that's UDD search. 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I usually ignore the bug reports that somebody has searched in the last year. 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Probably somebody else will look at them, 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 let's look at those that are lost in the limbos. 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I select wontfix, moreinfo, upstream or unreproducible. 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Those are those that probably you can do something on. 67 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And then you chose a team, preferably one of those that is listed 68 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in the page we saw before. 69 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Once you'll have selected a bug and something to do on it, 70 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you'll have to document what you do. 71 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because you can change many many stuff on the bug, 72 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you send the commands to control@bugs.debian.org 73 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but it's always nice to put a small a small sentence, or 2 or 3 74 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to say what made you conclude that is the right change. 75 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Also make sure the e-mail where you do the commands is sent 76 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to everybody interested, because by default it only sends it 77 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to the maintainer and the submitter in some cases. 78 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So if other people answered the bug report saying 79 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "Hey, I have the bug too" or if upstream came by to explain something, 80 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it's good to see all of those who interacted on the bug report and 81 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 put them all in copy. 82 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Ideally, people can receive the e-mail, read what you're saying and 83 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 don't have to go back to the bug page to read it again. 84 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So that you should sum up the thread if it was long and have them know everything. 85 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you do massive triage, you should have a few generic messages 86 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so you keep the messages and just replace the words as needed. 87 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It saves you a lot of time. 88 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Also, it allows you to put a lot of nice things in your generic e-mail 89 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that people are always happy to read without more effort. 90 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You know, add a little "Thanks for submitting the bug" or 91 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "That was a very interesting discussion" or something like that. 92 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Let's keep the positive energy flowing. 93 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There are many ways to triage. 94 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 One of them is trying to reproduce bug reports. 95 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the UDD we saw earlier, if you select 'unreproducible' 96 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Oh no… those that don't have the tag 'confirmed', 97 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 these are bugs that one person submitted but nobody knows if they're really 98 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 still up to date or if it's just, somebody submitted it but… 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If it's confirmed, there's more chance that the maintainer will look at them. 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If they're really old, maybe they have been corrected and nobody bothered 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to close the bug. 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If they're new, maybe you should have them too, so see if it's the case. 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If it's the case, you write to this adress 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the 'nnn' is the number of the bug and you add the tag 'confirmed' 105 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's how we interact with control@b.d.o 106 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All the bug tracking is on a e-mail interface 107 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 'found bugnumber versionnumber' 108 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that's a command that control will recognize, 109 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you give the bug number and what version you're running. 110 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You add the tag 'confirmed'. 111 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Since you found it, you're 2, so it's confirmed. 112 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And 'thanks', you always have to end your e-mails to control with 'thanks' 113 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 or 'thank you' or whatever variation of it you want. 114 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The control is a very very polite beast and likes you to be the same. 115 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you don't put politeness, it won't work. 116 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Actually it's to tell them that the commands are done, but 117 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 let's be polite also with machines.