Victor Palau's Blog

Working with Open Source Software

Using Bugzilla to track features

with 4 comments

One of the areas that we are currently working on is the use of Bugzilla to track and manage the integration of new features into Symbian Platform Releases. I have set-up a few examples of real features in Bugzilla for Symbian^3. Here is how we are proposing to use it:

mylyn

The above picture shows a “top-level” feature that has been tagged against Symbian^3 and that has been identified to depend on specific package features. To display the above dependency tree I have installed Mylyn with Caribide.C++ and connected it to the developer.symbian.org/bugtracker bugzilla sever. Lars Kurth posted a detailed discussion on how Mylyn and Tasktop can help you using  Bugzilla.

Lets have a more detailed look at how Bugzilla is used to support this activity! An entry is created per item with the title of the feature to be integrated and assigned to the right package.  Next, we select “Feature” as the value for the Severity field, this differentiates it from bugs and enhancements (small improvements).  We can give 3 level of priorities to the feature. My expectation is that priority 1 features will be those tracked by the Release Management team, and that they will be the critical content for the platform.  Once a feature is agreed as part of a release it will be tagged using the Keyword field (in this case as Symbian^3).

examplebugOnce it is known, the “Due” field in Planning is updated by the contributor(s) to reflect the date that the feature will be available in the MCL. Note that any additional context for the feature can be attached to the Bugzilla entry, including a link to a more detailed wiki-based description. The bugzilla ID can also be used for cross-referencing with Mercurial change list description, providing a factual link to the actual implementation of the feature.

All of this is currently a  proposal under prototyping , so any feedback will be really welcomed. So, what do you think?

Written by victorpalau

July 20, 2009 at 2:55 pm

4 Responses

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  1. [...] Using Bugzilla to track features by Victor Palau [...]

  2. you might also be interested in what we are doing for quality metrics with bugzilla:

    http://victorpalau.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/quality-metrics/

    victorpalau

    August 13, 2009 at 2:32 pm

  3. [...] a comment » Recently I blogged about using Bugzilla to track features. I am happy to report that things are moving forward really well thanks to the community and Mylyn. [...]

  4. [...] has previously written about using Bugzilla to track features with Mylyn and this related post shows how the Symbian Foundation is using Mylyn to for software [...]


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