[1946] in Release_7.7_team
Something to look at for bug-reporting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Oct 6 10:40:49 1999
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:40:39 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199910061440.KAA22977@small-gods.mit.edu>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
It looks like scarab [35] (http://www.mit.edu:8008/menelaus/scarab/35)
has a list of requirements for a bug-tracking system, distilled back
in 1993. These requirements are from the user perspective; there are
other requirements from the developer perspective which aren't covered
there. (I don't know if scarab really examined developer
requirements, but I'm still going through the meeting.)
Here is a summary of the requirements from that message. I do not
agree with all of these requirements, but it's good to think about
them.
The system should encourage input by supporting several means of
reporting and by providing a single point of access.
Bug submitters should receive an acknowledgement with an ID, and a
notification when the bug is fixed.
The system should be accessible from a variety of platforms.
The system should lose no information.
The system should interface with other support systems.
The system should support access by support groups.
Information about workarounds should be available and should go to
support groups.
The system should know the full history of the bug, the current status
of the bug, and when/if it is likely to be fixed.
The system should support a bunch of retrieval operations (see
the message).
The system should say what person is accountable for each bug.
The system should support linking related bug reports together.
The system should possibly distinguish between "bug reports"
(complaints) versus "error list entries" (confirmed bugs).
The system should support periodic reports for management.
The system should support time triggers to alert management of bugs
which aren't getting required action.
There should be client tools to automatically report common
configuration and prompt users for specific information. (Like
sendbug but for non-Unix platforms.)
