[Paraview-developers] Bug tracker usage

[Andy Cedilnik]

Hello All,

At the meeting some of you asked me to explain how to use the bug
tracker. So, here it is:

* The address of the bug tracker is: http://public.kitware.com/Bug .

* If this is your first time you are there, you will probably need to
create an account. Click on "Create a new Account" and enter e-mail
First Name and Last Name. This will send you e-mail with password. Then
you can login.

* Once you login you can do all sort of stuff. Let's start with
"Personal Page". Here you can change the password and change some other
settings. Defaults should be Ok, but it is good to know that these
options exist.

* Go to "Add a new Bug". There are several projects, that include CMake,
Insight Software Consortium, ITK, ParaView, System Administration, VTK,
and Xdmf. In general you should try to post bugs to the appropriate
project. So, if ParaView crashes because of the bug in VTK, then this
would be VTK bug. If Xdmf crashes in some VTK class because it is not
used correctly, then this is Xdmf bug.

* Click on ParaView. Here you see the dialog for adding bugs. Version
should be either the current version or "Devel" for main tree. Summary
should be a short sentence that summarize the problem (or feature).
Description should then be more detailed description of it. Ignore the
URL part. Please follow the Severities and Priorities as described. So,
do not mark all bugs as Severity Critical and Priority 5. Anyway, if it
is OS specific, set OS field to whatever the OS is. That is it.

* You can query bugs in several different ways. Five most recently
submitted and closed bugs are available on the entry page. You can see
all open and closed bugs assigned to you by clicking the number next to
"Bugs assigned to me:". You can see the list of open and closed bugs
reported by you by clicking the number next to "Bugs reported by me:".
You can also click on "Query Bugs", where you can search for more
specific options. If the options provided on query page do not allow you
to search specificlly enough, click on "advanced query page", where you
can search pretty much anything. If there is a query that you use all
the time, you can save it by providing its name. An example would be:

Project: ParaView
Version: All
Component: All
Status: Unconfirmed, New, Assigned, Reopened, Verified (you can select
multiple. In Mozilla hold control and select statuses)
Sort By: Priority - Descending
Save this query as: ParaView Open Bugs

This will create an entry in the list of "Saved Queries" which is
available on the main page.

* There are couple statistics that are provided. The two pie charts
report all bug summary and open bug summary. There is a table of bugs
per project. There is also "View Reports" page, where you see bugs per
developer.

* You can set bug properties by clicking on the bug. This will bring the
bug page. Here you can see who the reporter is, all different options,
comments, attachments, ... Here you can read the history of the bug,
change severity, change status, etc.

* You can assign a bug to a developer by selecting a developer from the
list under "Assigned To". Users of bug tracker have to be marked as
developers to be able to receive bugs. If you want to be marked as
developer, send me e-mail. Currently only some of you are developers.

* If you fix the bug, please note the fix in the cvs commit line, for
example:

cvs commit -m "Fix the problem with XYZ by performing the good old ABC
with FGH. This fixes Bug #3415 - XYZ crashes the 123"

And then in the bug tracker under additional comments write something
like:

Fixed in CVS file.cxx version 1.3746

And mark Status Closed and Resolution Fixed.

* For all bugs you report, you should receive e-mails when they are
modified.

That should be all. If you have any questions, let me know.

Thank you.


      Andy Cedilnik
      Kitware Inc.