Bug Tracker How To for BoA

Contents

  1. Bug Tracker How To for BoA
    1. Explore existing bugs
    2. Report a new bug
    3. Monitor a bug
    4. Assign a bug to a developer
    5. Resolving, closing, and deleting a bug

The BoA project uses the AIfA Bug Tracking System http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/bts, which is based on the web-based Mantis bugtracking system. Unfortunately, the documentation that is provided by Mantis is not very helpful for users new to bugtracking systems; also, it obviously match does not match the version of the software that is installed at the AIfA. Thus, some willingness to experiment with the system is necessary on our side.

The AIfA Bug Tracking System offers a wide range of possibilities. Since we are all new to such a system, it is possibly wise to restrict ourselves to the most basic features of the system:

First a word a word about users of the Bug Tracking system and their roles: Everyone can register at the system by visiting http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/bts and following the procedure described there. He or she is then automatically assigned the role reporter, who is permitted to view and report bugs (and not much more). Of the other roles, that are offered by the system, at the moment we only use

Manager and administror have to do with the managemnet of the bugtracking system, either project-wide (manager) or system-wide (administrator). Developer is the role that allows everything that has to do with the resolution of reported bugs; in addition, a developer has all rights of a reporter, hence a developer can also report a bug.

Explore existing bugs

In order to explore existing bugs, you have to be registered at least as reporter. In order to register yourself, visit http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/bts and follow the procedure described there. You will then be registered as a reporter, meaning that you are allowed to view bugs that have already been reported, and to submit new bug reports.

To view bugs that have already been reported, go to View Issues. In the lower part of the page, you find a list of all reported bugs (that are not already closed). In the upper part of the page, you find fields to search through the bug list and to apply filters to the list.

(!) Note the field in the upper right corner of the page: You can select the BoA project there.

Among other, hopefully self-explanatory information, The bug list gives for each bug a status, both in words and color-coded for that line. The exact meaning of the status is not fixed by Mantis, but can be defined for BoA as follows:

In order to see details of a bug, click on its ID. You are then presented a page with extensive information, including a history of the bug. In order to see even more details, continue to View advanced.

Report a new bug

In order to report a new bug, you have to be registered at least as reporter. In order to register yourself, visit http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/bts and follow the procedure described there. You will then be registered as a reporter, meaning that you are allowed to view bugs that have already been reported, and to submit new bug reports.

By clicking Report issue you are presented a page (the View issue details page) where you can enter information about the bug you want to report. The fields should be self-explanatory, only the rationale behind View Status is unclear: If set to Private, only the reported can view the reported bug.

Please make sure to give enough details of the bug to make it easy to reproduce it!

Monitor a bug

In order to monitor a bug, you have to be registered at least as reporter. In order to register yourself, visit http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/bts and follow the procedure described there. You will then be registered as a reporter, meaning that you are allowed to view bugs that have already been reported, and to submit new bug reports.

You can enable monitoring of a bug from the View issue details page, where you find a button labeled accordingly. You can disable monitoring later from the same page.

Once monitoring of a bug is enabled, you will receive email notifivations of important events related to this bug: Assignment, change of status, deletion etc..

Assign a bug to a developer

In order to assign a bug, you have to be registered at least as a developer.

You can assign bugs both to yourself and to other developers. While assigning a bug to yourself will most probably noticed with some relief by other developers B) , assigning a bug to another developer may provoke a reaction X-( - including a reassignment of the bug to somebody else. Keep that in mind when assigning bugs!

You can assign a bug e.g. from the View issue details page. The status of the bug should automatically change to assigned.

When a bug is assigned to a developer, the following persons are informed via email:

Resolving, closing, and deleting a bug

In order to resolve, close or delete a bug, you have to be registered at least as a developer.

You can performe these actions e.g. from the View issue details by changing the status to resolved or closed, or by using the Delete issue button.

The rules when to resolve, close, or delete a bug are not specified by the bug tracking system. For BoA we use:

When a bug was resolved, closed, or deleted, the following persons are informed via email:

(!) When changing the state of a bug to resolved, please enter a short description of the bug fix into the appropriate field. Also, specify the corresponding revision number under which the bug fix was committed to the Boa repository. Correspondingly, when committing the code with the bug fix to the Boa repository, specify the bug's ID in the commit message. This practise makes it easy to track the resolution of bugs both in the repository and in the bug tracker.

boawiki: BugTrackerHowTo (last edited 2009-12-17 15:40:26 by localhost)