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I've started getting involved with triaging bugs. Three of the first four bugs I looked at were about Hardy (8.04).

What should I do to help triage bugs for versions of Ubuntu that are no longer supported? Should I just set them to 'invalid'?

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    Close as won't fix I would presume with a note that 8.04 is beyond EOL and a link to the Ubuntu wiki with supported versions and life cycle.
    – Panther
    Jan 26, 2015 at 18:03
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    Close voters: This question is not off-topic. It is about bug triaging, and is not a support question!
    – Seth
    Jan 28, 2015 at 1:00
  • @labyrinth ONLY look at EOL releases that have Open Bugs (see my comment on my answer). There are no bugs that are Open that are against Hardy. (Invalid, Won't Fix, Fix Released, Expired are all considered "closed" and should NOT be touched.) Only look at release series' targeted bugs which have "Open" statuses (New, Incomplete, Triaged, Fix Committed).
    – Thomas Ward
    Jan 28, 2015 at 18:07
  • Followup: No currently EOL releases have any open bugs at this time.
    – Thomas Ward
    Jan 28, 2015 at 23:52

1 Answer 1

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I am a member of Bug Control (one of the higher-privileges bug triager groups) and the Bug Squad. We have specific guidelines for triage of old bugs (excluding atypical, special guidelines bugs which have special nonstandard workflows)

TL;DR: The status we set on EOL bugs is dependent on multiple factors.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER A BUG STATUS IF IT IS "Fix Released", "Invalid", or "Won't Fix" already!!! These bugs are already considered 'closed' and you should NOT mess with them!

If the bug is 'Fix Committed' then it depends on what you do there - either try and see if a fix was ever committed, or mark "Won't Fix", since EOL release. Be careful here. Sometimes a release isn't really fully EOL so you have to keep that in mind (10.04 Server for example).

If the bug is known to be fixed AFTER the EOL release is out we Won't Fix the EOL release's bug.

If the bug is not confirmed fixed, we mark Incomplete and ask for people with the oldest supported release and other supported releases to try and replicate the bug, and report back. If nobody can confirm we can either leave Incomplete until the bug autoexpires or Won't Fix the bug (usually the former if nobody responds back, or the latter if people report back and can't replicate the bug).

If the bug is solely affecting Hardy and no other releases then we Won't Fix the bug.

In any case that we mark the bug Wont Fix we always comment explaining why and that they should change the status to New (if no other release series is on the bug) if they find the bug or reproduce in a supported release.

In any case we mark incomplete we comment why we did and ask for additional tasks or info and mention the bug will autoclose and expire after some period of inactivity.

Invalid only makes sense if we have a new bug filed on the EOL release, then we can mark it 'Invalid' or 'Won't Fix'. We typically reserve 'Invalid' for "Not a Bug" bugs, or bugs which are against nonexistent packages or things not in the repositories (such as PPA versions and such instead of the versions in the repositories.)

Your best bet is to follow the triage guide and stop by the #ubuntu-bugs channel on Freenode IRC and ask for per-bug guidelines and tips and suggestions from other bug squaders and also bug control members.

(This has been on my radar for some time... I am going to go through the EOL-release-series-targeted bugs by script and automatically close them all via the Launchpad API in a few days after checking with other bug controllers and the security team and other teams to make sure it won't impinge on their processes or cause mayhem)

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    My LP profile is here if you want to confirm my claims in the first part of my answer here of my group affiliations.
    – Thomas Ward
    Jan 28, 2015 at 2:50
  • @labyrinth If you want, you can hop into the chat and discuss things with me, or hop onto IRC (my username there is teward on Freenode)
    – Thomas Ward
    Jan 28, 2015 at 14:43
  • @teward Thank you so much! I've been benefiting from OSS for many years and wanted to get more involved with helping with the community. When I saw on Distrowatch that Canonical had a little interest-finder for getting involved, I went through it and decided to get involved with bug fixes. Thanks for giving me a lengthy, but to-the-point answer.
    – labyrinth
    Jan 28, 2015 at 14:47
  • @teward Ok, I can't go there during work hours, but if I see you on irc after hours, I may have other questions if I can't find the answers in the triage guides and such. My name is labyrinth on freenode, too.
    – labyrinth
    Jan 28, 2015 at 14:49
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    Would it be possible to add this somewhere in the Ubuntu Bugs Knowledge Base on wiki.ubuntu.com? I would be happy to copy & paste (& give attribution to) this somewhere in there, if you don't have time. As someone who also has recently started bug triage (btw, thanks for helping me recently on IRC re:Launchpad bug watchers), this was something I also was wondering.
    – drkokandy
    Jan 28, 2015 at 14:53

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