Launchpad itself

  1. Bug #163694
  2. Comment #0

Comment 0 for bug 163694

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote : Fix Committed/Released distinction is inconsistent and consumes more time than it saves

In some projects that use Launchpad for bugtracking, Fix Released means that end users can download or access a release of the software in which the bug is fixed. But in Ubuntu, Fix Released means "a fix was uploaded to an official Ubuntu repository" <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status>; the bug might not yet be fixed even in the latest beta version, let alone the latest release. For Ubuntu to adopt the original meaning would be infeasible, even once mass status changes are introduced.

This difference in interpretation will likely cause grief later on, just as different interpretations of Incomplete caused grief when expiration of Incomplete bug reports was introduced. It also makes Launchpad harder to understand. It's not enough for Fix Committed and Fix Released to have a difference in meaning; to be worth keeping distinct, they would also need a *functional* difference that saves more time than the time spent distinguishing between them.

Currently the only functional difference is that in a normal search, Fix Committed bug reports are shown but Fix Released bug reports are not. This was intended to cut down on duplicates, by showing users bug reports that may still be affecting them. But this doesn't work for Ubuntu, where a bug is marked Fix Released while the vast majority of users are still using versions with the bug unfixed. Partly to counteract this, the "Is the bug you’re reporting one of these?" list includes Fix Released bugs, but that won't work after a few years, as the suggestions become dominated by bugs that were fixed years ago.

I suggest that the distinction between "Fix Committed" and "Fix Released", while meaningful, is not appropriate in Launchpad because it's consuming more developer and QA time than it saves. To resolve this, I propose that:
(1) "Fix Committed" and "Fix Released" be merged into "Fixed";
(2) a text field be introduced for developers (and Soyuz) to record the version/versions in which a bug was Fixed;
(3) project maintainers be able to configure how long a bug report remains visible in default search results after the bug is Fixed (for Ubuntu this might be 18 months, while for Launchpad itself it would be 30 days).