The purpose of this document is to briefly describe the various statuses an issue can be placed in, and what that status means. In addition, the simple workflow and transition between statuses will be discussed.

Issue Status Definitions

New

The 'New' status is where all bugs start. This is an issue which has not received a review by a bug marshal to move it to an appropriate next status. Steps required to move to the next logical step include:

• checking Category and Severity are set correctly




• verifying the issue does not look like a support issue (if so, note the reporter should use the appropriate support channels, and change status to Closed)




• determine that enough debugging information has been provided so that a developer can move the issue forward (e.g. on SIP issues, that the standard SIP debug and history, console output, and configuration file information has been provided, or in the case of a crash issue, that a proper backtrace has been provided)

If the necessary information has not been collected, then the issue should be moved to Feedback status, and the missing information be requested by the reporter*.

When all required information has been collected, the issue can be moved to the Acknowledged status.

(*) issues which remain in the Feedback status for more than 2 weeks without feedback from the reporter should be marked as Closed/Suspended

Acknowledged

The 'Acknowledged' status is the first step to issue resolution. It is an issue that has been filed correctly, the categorization and severity have been set, and that initial debugging information has been collected.

A developer may then review the issue tracker for Acknowledged issues and to determine whether additional information is necessary (i.e. that a crash issue with backtrace requires valgrind output, or other non-standard debugging feedback).

Issues may be moved to the next step in the workflow when the developer has either determined the issue is Confirmed, requires additional Feedback, is an issue that has already been resolved (or does not need to be resolved), in which case it should be Closed.

Confirmed

The 'Confirmed' status represents issues which have been verified as existing in the current branch(es), and has all necessary information to be accepted into Acknowledged status. The general qualifier for an issue being moved to Confirmed is more than one community member stating the issue exists.

Confirmed issues may also contain patches created by developers which need to be applied in order to gain further knowledge or debugging by the original reporter, or any other community member who has verified this issue as existing. The developer will then move the issue to Feedback status while waiting for information from the reporter(s).

Issues with patches that are candidates for inclusion into the various branches that should resolve the issue are to be moved to the Ready for Testing status.

Ready for Testing

'Ready for Testing' indicates issues which have patches available for testing by community members or the original reporter which should resolve the reported issue.

If the patch does not resolve the issue, then it should be placed back into Confirmed status until an additional patch can be created for testing.

If the patch resolves the issue, then it should be moved to the Ready for Review status.

Ready for Review

When an issue has a patch that has been tested by a community member and which resolves the originally reported issue, should then be moved to the Ready for Review status. Issues marked as Ready for Review should then either be reviewed by another developer prior to merging (if it is a non-invasive fix), or the patch should be placed on Reviewboard if it is a complicated or invasive fix.

If an issue has a reviewboard link, it should be placed in the Additional Information section of an issue, and the marker [review] prefixed to the issue title.

Resolved

The Resolved status is rarely used directly by manual intervention, but
rather is utilized by svnbot and other automated methods prior to an
issue being closed.

Feedback

Feedback is used when an issue is awaiting information from the original reporter, or other active members of the community in the issue. Issues which remain in the feedback state longer than 2 weeks without feedback from any active participants, and which cannot be moved without, are to be Closed and marked as suspended.

License Required

License Required is used when a patch has been attached to an issue, but which is currently in the License Pending state, or has been rejected and is awaiting the reporter to resign the license.

Assigned

Issues marked as Assigned are the responsibility of the assigned developer, typically because they contain some sort of special knowledge required to resolve the issue, or because they have decided to take responsibility for moving the issue to resolution.

Closed

Issues which have a resolution are marked as Closed. There are several resolutions that a Closed issue can contain, such as Fixed, Won't Fix, Duplicate, or Suspended. Issues that have been Closed manually should have an appropriate resolution set such as Suspended or Won't Fix, along with a note indicating why the issue was Closed.

If the issue is being closed due to a lack of feedback, the resolution should be Suspended, and a note indicating the issue was closed due to a lack of feedback, and that it will be reopened upon request if the reporter can provide the necessary information to move the issue forward again.

Typical Workflow

The typical workflow of an issue is as follows:

Brief

New > Feedback(*) > Acknowledged > Confirmed > Ready for Testing > Ready for Review > Closed (commited, closed by svnbot)

(*)Optional status used when not enough information provided to move to Acknowledged.

Verbose

• Issue is filed by a community member. All issues will start in the status New.




• An issue marshal then performs triage on New issues and determined if they are valid issues (non-support), have been correctly categorized, have the necessary debugging information, etc…

  • Issues without the necessary information are moved to Feedback

  
  

  • Issues that are support, or feature requests without patches, are Closed

  
  

  • Issues that have all the necessary debugging information to move forward are Acknowledged




• After an issue has been moved to the Acknowledged state, then a developer will review to determine if the issue exists, and if so, to move it to the Confirmed state. If additional information is required, the issue may be moved to Feedback state.




• An issue reaches the Confirmed state when the issue has been verified to exist. Issues that are Confirmed may also contain patches that provide additional debugging information.




• Issues that have patches that require testing and feedback from the community are then placed in the Ready for Testing status.




• Once a patch has been tested and confirmed to resolve the issue, we change the status to Ready for Review.




• An issue that is Ready for Review needs to be looked over by a developer, or placed on Reviewboard (for larger patches) prior to being commited. Issues that are in Ready for Review are typically ready, or nearly ready to be committed.




• Once an issue has been commited, svnbot will then Close the issue if the correct keywords are used in the commit message (see Guidelines for Commit Messages)

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