[Gnu-arch-users] Call for assistance: triage of old bugs

[Andrew Suffield]

The new bug tracking system is now largely operational. However, the
database contains many old bugs imported from savannah, plus those
filed directly over the past few months, and I'm reasonably sure that
at least some of them have already been fixed, but I don't have time
to check all of them myself. So, I'm asking for everbody with a
reasonable amount of experience using tla to assist in sifting them.

There are currently 90 bugs in unassigned/; the rest of the tree is
not interesting here, as it is already being dealt with.

What you can do:

Make sure you're using the latest revision (currently from the 1.3 branches).

Pick a bug from this list (make sure you aren't looking at a cached
version - hitting the 'Update' button should do the trick):
http://bugs.gnuarch.org/cgi-bin/list.cgi?state=unassigned&group=all&unverified=on

Determine whether or not the bug still exists by trying to reproduce
it.

If it does, then send mail to address@hidden like this:

---
To: address@hidden

verified 35 address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3--patch-2
---

This will mark it as verified in the named revision, which takes it
off the list.

Please make sure you use the right tree version - it's no good to note
a tla--devo revision for a bug in the documentation.

If the bug does not exist, then send mail to this list, like this:

---
To: address@hidden
Subject: [REJECT: 35]

This bug appears to have been fixed already.

address@hidden:~$ tla abrowse
abrowse: no default archive set
---

The mail should contain a brief demonstration or explanation of how
the bug doesn't exist - paste a terminal log, quote from the
documentation, or whatever. If you're not sure, just use a [BUG: nn]
subject tag describing what you tried. It's okay if a few bugs can't
be verified either way, and more useful to clear the simple ones.

It usually takes no more than a few minutes to test each bug, and
every one that you can either verify or close helps - just doing two a
day, between six people, will clear the list in a week.

Some of these bugs are potentially nasty, so don't experiment on real
tress unless you particularly want to go manually exorcising broken
changesets.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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