HOW TO DO TRIAGE EMACS BUGS  -*- outline -*-

This document just describes the procedure of triaging bugs, for
information on how to work with the bug tracker, see the bugtracker
file in the same directory.

* The what and why of bug triage

Bugs have to be regularly looked at and acted upon.  Not all bugs are
critical, but at the least, each bug needs to be regularly re-reviewed
to make sure it is still reproducible.  A large backlog of bugs is
disheartening to the developers, and a culture of ignoring bugs is
harmful to users, who expect software that works.

The process of going through open bugs and acting on them is called
bug triage.  This document will go through the standard process of
triaging bugs.

* Bug backlog triage procedure

The goal of this triage is to prune down the list of old bugs, closing
the ones that are not reproducible on the current release.

  1. To start, enter debbugs mode (either debbugs-gnu or debbugs-org), and
     accept the default list option of bugs that have severity serious,
     important, or normal.  
  2. This will also show closed bugs that have yet to be archived.  You can
     filter these out in debbugs-gnu with "x" (debbugs-gnu-toggle-suppress).
  3. For each bug, do the following:
     - Read the mail thread for the bug. Find out if anyone has been able to
       reproduce this on the current release.
     - If someone has been able to, then your work is finished for this bug.
     - If no one has mentioned being able to reproduce on the current release,
       read the bug description and attempt to reproduce on an emacs started
       with "emacs -Q" (the goal is to not let our personal configs interfere
       with bug testing).
     - If you can reproduce, then reply on the thread (either on the original
       message, or anywhere you find appropriate) that you can reproduce this on
       the current release.
     - If you can't reproduce, and the bug is older than 2 years old, reply on
       the thread that you cannot reproduce this on the current release, you
       will be closing this as unreproducible. Add that if anyone can reproduce
       it, please re-open the bug. After sending that mail, send a control
       message on debbugs to set the status to "doneunreproducable".
     - If you can't reproduce, but the bug is newer than 2 years old, state that
       you can't reproduce it on the current release, ask if they can try again
       against the current release. Wait a few weeks for their reply - if they
       can reproduce it, then that's great, otherwise close as
       "doneunreproducable".
  4. Your changes will take some time to take effect. After a period of minutes
     to hours, you will get a mail telling you the control message has been
     processed. At this point, you and everyone else can see your changes.