I understand that the usual way to close out bug reports is having the original author do it themselves. What's the policy on closing bug reports that haven't had activity in over 6 months?
Let the maintainers handle their bugs.
Old bugs should not be closed just because they are "old".
For example, I have an open bug which is 26 years old:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=5898
and I don't see any reason to close it.
El 6/2/23 a las 11:26, Brian Thompson escribió:
I understand that the usual way to close out bug reports is having the
original author do it themselves. What's the policy on closing bug
reports
that haven't had activity in over 6 months?
Let the maintainers handle their bugs.
Old bugs should not be closed just because they are "old".
For example, I have an open bug which is 26 years old:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=5898
and I don't see any reason to close it.
"Tomas" == Tomas Pospisek <tpo2@sourcepole.ch> writes:
It's even appropriate to ask if the bug still happens.
...
Most of us do not prefer to close bugs simply because they are old.
But closing bugs with a moreinfo tag when information has not been
provided in six months to a year is likely fine.
So is asking for more info and adding a moreinfo tag when appropriate.
It's even appropriate to ask if the bug still happens.
...
On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 10:07:59AM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
Most of us do not prefer to close bugs simply because they are old.It creates angry users and no real benefits.
On Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 10:45:16PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 10:07:59AM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
Most of us do not prefer to close bugs simply because they are old.It creates angry users and no real benefits.
this is undoubtingly true for some bugs and users.
for other bugs (and users) there will be no reply ever and unactionable bugs clutter the view and harm bug fixing.
so I don't think there is a general rule and I also don't think asking
"does this bug still apply?" is harmful,
...
cheers,
Holger
I remember being pretty pissed when in a different open source project
some abuser asked me every 6-12 months whether I can still reproduce the problem with the latest upstream version, each time I spent several
hours for confirming it, but this abuser never bothered to follow up on
that after I did the work that was requested from me.
...
So in short I agree with Holger: it really depends. It's rude to ask
someone to do a bunch of work when you have no intention of following
through on that work, which happens a lot when new volunteers do bug
triage without the skills required to follow up on the responses to that triage. But also if you're never going to work on a bug and you don't
think it serves any documentation purpose, it's okay to close it as
wontfix and arguably better communication to the bug reporter than leaving
it open and creating the illusion that you might fix it some day.
...
The more prominent the
package and the larger the unsophisticated user base, the more aggressive
you have to be about closing bugs if you want the open bug list to be a useful artifact for guiding development.
...
Or one can just use an autoclose bot, I guess, which is basically the equivalent of one of those email autoreplies that says "this mailbox is unattended and no one will ever read your email." :) And, to be honest,
if that's the reality of the situation, maybe better to know than not!
I am sometimes getting an email from the BTS that this "typo in the
manpage" bug I reported 20 years ago has just been fixed in the "New maintainer" upload of a package.
When working on orphaned packages or doing NMUs, it is also often useful
for me to see the amount/age/contents of bugs in a package as an
indication in what state it is.
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