Bug tracker

Introduction

The RISC OS Open web site provides bug reporting and tracking facilities through the “Bugs” link in the navigation bar at the top of the page. Anyone can read reports, but to modify them you must first log in – see “Log in system” for details.

Based on Collaboa, the tracker combines bug reports with Subversion integration to link fault reports and feature requests with sets of changes related to the fault or feature, those sets of changes in turn linking into the Subversion repository itself. The ROOL site includes home-grown extensions offering a limited amount of CVS integration.

Parts, milestones and releases

The bug tracker divides software concepts up into three categories.

• Parts are definable components or collections of components; anything from all of RISC OS, to a particular relocatable module, or even an individual source file.

• Releases are meant in the traditional software sense – for example, a piece of software may go through a series of official beta releases with a specific version number on its way to a new major version.

• Milestones describe major significant steps in a project’s life. This may be a new major non-beta version of some software, for example.

In practice Collaboa doesn’t assign any direct significance to releases, parts or milestones beyond where they appear in the user interface and Collaboa administrators are free in many respects to assign their own specific meanings to these concepts and use them as best fits their users’ needs.

Tickets

Collaboa tracks bug reports and feature requests using tickets. When you follow the “Bugs” link in the navigation bar at the top of a page, you’ll be presented with a list of all currently open (active) tickets. You can limit this list in two main ways.

Direct filtering

By using the “Filter tickets” link, you will open a drop-down panel with a series of filter words followed by a “plus” or “minus” link (the exact appearance of the panel and its contents will depend on your web browser). Each of the phrases describes something you can add to (by following the “plus” link to its right) or remove from (by following the “minus” link) the filter. Items showing the plus sign are therefore by definition not currently included in your filter. Conversely, items showing the minus sign are currently active.

By default, you will find that the “Open” item is included in the filter, so it shows the “minus” link afterwards. If you were to remove “Open” from the filter by following its “minus” link, you will end up with an unfiltered list – all tickets will be shown. Note that ticket numbers do not necessarily start at zero and there may be gaps in the number range, because of tickets used for testing purposes that have since been removed from the database completely.

Using the various “plus and minus” links you can restrict your filter to specific parts, bug or feature severities and so-on.

Milestones

When viewing any page generated by Collaboa, you will see a “Milestones” link in the sidebar on the right. If you follow this, you will be presented with bar graphs listing all currently defined milestones and showing how close they are to completion. The indications of the number of open and closed faults underneath each graph are links – if you follow them, you’ll be presented with an appropriately filtered list of tickets. You can further modify the filter directly if you wish, as described above.

Administration

The management of the lists of parts, releases and milestones is done by system administrators. If you’d like to get involved with Collaboa administration, please contact ROOL – note that in general the number of administrators will be kept to a minimum, balancing the security and concurrency implications of increasing number of administrators against the workload each administrator is experiencing.