Fedora bug triage - workflow proposal

[David Mansfield]

On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 17:01 +0000, Christopher Brown wrote:
> On 15/01/2008, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > Jon Stanley wrote:
> > >
> > > 1)  Reporter files a bug report, it originates in NEW state
> >
> > Can we renamed this state to UNCONFIRMED?
> 
> NEW or UNCONFIRMED, its six of one, half-a-dozen of the other...
> 
> > > 2)  Triage team looks at bug report, determines if dupe or
> > > insufficient information exists to solve it. If there is not enough
> > > information in the bug, then triage team puts the bug in NEEDINFO.  As
> > > you will see below, this state has a finite life cycle associated with
> > > it.
> > > 3)  Assuming bug survives through the triage team, it changes state to
> > > ASSIGNED (triage team can put it in either NEEDINFO or CLOSED, as
> > > appropriate).  Note that per the definition[1], ASSIGNED does not mean
> > > that someone has actually agreed to take action, simply that the issue
> > > is well defined and triaged accordingly
> >
> > Wouldn't a state like TRIAGED be more meaningful then? ASSIGNED
> > frequently is assumed to be assuming ownership by the maintainers.
> 
> ASSIGNED is easier and more understandable to people who have language
> barriers to contend with.
> 
> > > 4)  Once a developer has taken responsibility for a bug and is
> > > actively working on it, the state transitions to ON_DEV.
> 
> Sounds good.
> 
> > If ASSIGNED is renamed to TRIAGED, then this state can be known as
> > ASSIGNED instead.
> 
> I'm keen not to get lost in arguing about the names of states. I think
> all is fine as is - the issue here is workflow and what is best for
> that.
> 

I disagree and agree with the original poster, more or less, and I think
names ARE important.  Do you name a variable tracking weight as 'height'
in your program? No.  So names are important AND they should be
understandable for non-native speakers.  I believe using ASSIGNED when
it's _not_ assigned is a bad design choice, and using ON_DEV for
ASSIGNED is also a bad choice, but I agree with you, TRIAGED is a bad
choice for the WAITING_FOR_MANPOWER state...

David