LEP/ForwardAttachmentsUpstream

Not logged in - Log In / Register

Talk to the product strategist soon after cutting a first draft of this document

Forward Attachments Upstream (To Bugzilla)

After forwarding a bug report upstream, it should be easy to copy specific attachments to that bug tracker as well.

Contact: The primary contact for this LEP. Normally the drafter or the implementer.
On Launchpad: Link to a blueprint, milestone or (best) a bug tag search across launchpad-project

Rationale

Many bugs reported to Ubuntu are actually issues in the upstream project, so we want to notify them of the problem. Launchpad includes functionality for filing a bug upstream and/or linking it with a bug watch.

Many upstreams have policies that require bugs to include certain log files, config files, or etc. Via tools like apport we are able to automatically capture these files. However, including these files when forwarding the bug upstream is still a tediously manual and time consuming process, since they must be individually downloaded locally and then re-uploaded to the remote tracker.

By simplifying the work flow of forwarding attachments upstream:

Stakeholders

Who really cares about this feature? When did you last talk to them?

User stories

$STORY_NAME

As a $PERSON
I want $FEATURE
so that $BENEFIT

Have as many as you like. Group user stories together into meaningfully deliverable units. They'll be used as the driving elements of exploratory testing QA.

Constraints and Requirements

Must

Nice to have

Must not

Out of scope

Success

How will we know when we are done?

How will we measure how well we have done?

Thoughts?

I'm a firm believer that we in Ubuntu need to become more prolific at forwarding bug reports upstream. We get a *ton* of reports, most of which are actually upstream issues that we're unlikely to work on in the distro itself, and typically we just leave the bug as-is.

Unfortunately, this gives the reporter a bad experience - they just see their bug report stuck in limbo, and complain when they don't get any response from a developer. They don't realize the issue is they've reported it in the wrong place, and they expect the distro engineers to tend to forwarding it whereever it needs to go.

Similarly, it engenders a bad experience amongst upstream. They want to know about and solve problems, but don't want to feel like they have to patrol Ubuntu's bug tracker themselves. They want their bugs in their own bug tracker, and it makes them feel like we're not participating if we don't forward the bugs to them.

Of course, it's a bad experience for package maintainers and triagers too, as bug reports pile up! Launchpad engineers even made us a special report so we can see them pile up more easily: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+upstreamreport

But the procedure of forwarding a given bug report is an involved, multi-step process, particularly so when you want to send some of the attachments as well. There is not much creativity involved, it's mostly just copying files and poking widgets - stuff that computers are much better at doing than we are!

This LEP focuses just on the attachment forwarding portion of the problem; LEP/BugzillaComponents has focused on another aspect of the problem and is nearing completion.

LEP/ForwardAttachmentsUpstream (last edited 2011-09-03 01:07:26 by bryce)