OpenStack-Ansible Bug Handling¶

Bug Reporting¶

Bugs should be filed on the OpenStack-Ansible Launchpad project.

When submitting a bug, or working on a bug, please ensure the following criteria are met:

The description clearly states or describes the original problem or root cause of the problem.
The description clearly states the expected outcome of the user action.
Include historical information on how the problem was identified.
Any relevant logs or user configuration are included, either directly or through a pastebin.
If the issue is a bug that needs fixing in a branch other than master, please note the associated branch within the launchpad issue.
The provided information should be totally self-contained. External access to web services/sites should not be needed.
Steps to reproduce the problem if possible.

Bug Tags¶

If the reported needs fixing in a branch in addition to master, add a ‘<release>-backport-potential’ tag (e.g. liberty-backport-potential). There are predefined tags that will auto-complete.

Status¶

Please leave the status of an issue alone until someone confirms it or a member of the bugs team triages it. While waiting for the issue to be confirmed or triaged the status should remain as New.

Importance¶

Should only be touched if it is a Blocker/Gating issue. If it is, please set to High, and only use Critical if you have found a bug that can take down whole infrastructures. Once the importance has been changed the status should be changed to Triaged by someone other than the bug creator.

The triaging process is explained here below.

Bug triage¶

What is a bug triage¶

“Bug triage is a process where tracker issues are screened and prioritised. Triage should help ensure we appropriately manage all reported issues - bugs as well as improvements and feature requests.” (Source: Moodle bug triage)

Reported bugs need confirmation, prioritization, and ensure they do not go stale. If you care about OpenStack stability but are not wanting to actively develop the roles and playbooks used within the OpenStack-Ansible project, consider contributing in the area of bug triage.

Please reference the Project Team Guide bugs reference_ for information about bug status/importance and the life cycle of a bug.

Bug triage meeting duties¶

If the bug description is incomplete, or the report is lacking the information necessary to reproduce the issue, ask the reporter to provide missing information, and set the bug status to Incomplete

If the bug report contains enough information and you can reproduce it (or it looks valid), then you should set its status to Confirmed.

If the bug has security implications, set the security flag (under “This report is public” on the top right)

If the bug affects a specific area covered by an official tag, you should set the tag. For example, if the bug is likely to be quite easy to solve, add the low-hanging-fruit tag.

The bug triage meeting is probably a good time for people with bug supervisors rights to also prioritize bugs per importance (on top of classifying them on status).

Bug skimming duty¶

To help triaging bugs, one person of the bug team can be on “bug skimming duty”.

Q:: What is the goal of the bug skimming duty?
A:: Bug skimming duty reduces the amount of work other developers have to spend to do a proper root cause analysis (and later fix) of bug reports. For this, close the obviously invalid bug reports, confirm the obviously valid bug reports, ask questions if things are unclear.
Q:: Do I need to prove that a bug report is valid/invalid before I can set it to Confirmed/Invalid ?
A:: No. Sometimes it is not even possible because you do not have the resources. Looking at the code and tests often enables you to make an educated guess. Citing your sources in a comment helps the discussion.
Q:: What is the best status to close a bug report if its issue cannot be reproduced?
A:: Definitively Invalid. The status Incomplete is an open state and means that more information is necessary.
Q:: How do I handle open bug reports which are Incomplete for too long?
A:: If it is in this state for more than 30 days and no answers to the open questions are given, close it with Won’t Fix.
Q:: How do I handle dependencies to other bugs or TBD features in other projects? For example, I can fix a bug in OpenStack-Ansible but I need that a feature in Compute (nova) gets implemented before.
A:: Leave a comment in the OpenStack-Ansible bug report which explains this dependency and leave a link to the blueprint or bug report of the other project you depend on.
Q:: Do I have to double-check bug reports which are New and have an assignee?
A:: Usually not. This bug report has an inconsistent state though. If a bug report has an assignee, it should be In Progress and have an importance set.

Bug skimming duty weekly checklist¶

Prioritize or reprioritize OpenStack-Ansible confirmed bugs.
Move year old wishlist bugs to Opinion/Wishlist to remove clutter. You can use the following message:

This wishlist bug has been open a year without any activity. I am moving this to “Opinion / Wishlist”. This is an easily-obtainable queue of older requests. This bug can be reopened (set back to “New”) if someone decides to work on this.
Move bugs that can not be reproduced to an invalid state if they are unmodified for more than a month.
Send an email to the openstack-discuss list with the list of bugs to triage during the week. A new bug marked as Critical or High must be treated in priority.

OpenStack-Ansible Bug Handling