During the recent discussions the idea was presented to introduce a new
bug severity level "fixed" which could be used to mark "fixed" bugs
without closing the bug report.
I think this is a great idea:
1. We have a lot of non-maintainer releases these days and I guess there
will be even more in the future. Most of the time, non-maintainer releases
are made to fix bugs. As we have a very wide consensus that noone else
than the usual maintainer should close any bugs of his/her packages, the
new severity level would provide a clean way to mark bugs as "fixed"
without actually closing them.
2. It is important to define a way how scripts can mechanically check for
fixed-but-not-closed bug reports. For example, we use the bug severity
levels to distinguish between release-critical, normal, and wish-list bug
reports. The new field would make this check very easy.
3. Sometimes, one discovers bugs on other's packages in the bug tracking
system which are "fixed" already. However, we agreed not to close bug
reports of others w/o asking them first. With that, one would have to mail
the maintainer and ask for it, etc. Usually, one does not get replies in
these cases (if the maintainer would have enough time to give a reply,
he/she would probably already have closen the bug report :). With the new
severity level, everyone would be allowed to change the severity level of
fixed bugs to "fixed" solving this problem.
4. We'll implement the new upload procedure soon. With that, dinstall
could check whether the upload is a maintainer or a non-maintainer upload.
In case of a NMU, it should not close the bugs but set their severity
level of the corresponding bugs to "fixed".
5. AFAIK, adding a new severity level is not too much work.
Therefore, I currently don't see any disadvantages of the new severity
level but several important advantages.
Any comments are appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
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