355285 - clone should optionally retain the product and component of the current bug

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: Creating/Changing Bugs, enhancement, P4)

Description

[timeless]

i've been using clone (or trying to use clone) heavily internally.

someone clearly has a different definition of clone than i do.

my definition of clone includes retaining the classification, product, component, and assignee/qa.

the reason i make a clone is so that i don't have to search for the product/component/assignee/qa. if i wanted to file a new bug i'd have gone off and filed a new bug.

the cloning we use involves changing basically a flag which basically indicates a different branch.

steps:
1. file a bug in foopy/newpie/boopy against: assi:yippie qa:darpy with summary peppy and comment hipp-hipp-horrip
2. click clone

expected results:
bug is prefilled with foopy/newpie/boopy against: assi:yippie qa:darpy with summary peppy and comment hipp-hipp-horrip

actual results (in a heavily customized bugzilla):
product chooser!

i've tested this with an internal bugzilla and bugzilla.gnome.org, both are heavily hacked, but imo no one in their right mind would implement clone this way, so i hope that there wouldn't be two people hacking bugzilla to make this.

i'm sorry if i'm offending anyone. but the purpose of cloning a bug in my mind should be to clone it. if someone wants to file a bug against some other product/component, then they're really filing a different bug, but if we want to make this possible, then what we should do is give what i want with a link "change product" that links to the current impl.

note that in the installs i've dealt with finding the component/product/classification is a royal pain, and picking the assignee/qa against is too. whereas those really don't matter when you're filing a bug against a different place (presumably you know where you want to send it and won't care about clicking on things).

Comment 1

[Olav Vitters]

That part is standard on bgo. I sometimes use clone to file the same bug in different products/components. That is actually the only reason I use it for.

Some people expect clone to act as 'show enter_bug.cgi?product=$PRODUCT&component=$COMPONENT'. But nothing other than that. This to quickly file multiple different bugs within a product.

Comment 2

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

This does all the correct things on a standard Bugzilla installation. You are having problems with a local customization.

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #2)
> This does all the correct things on a standard Bugzilla installation. You are
> having problems with a local customization.
> 

The product chooser step is real! But I'm not sure we would like to file the new bug in the same product and component automatically, for the reason described by bkor in comment 1.

Comment 4

[timeless]

this does not work for me. this is crazy. the purpose of something named "clone" should be precisely as described in comment 0 and comment 1.

if you want something to mean "refile summary/c0 against some random classification/product/component/assignee/qacontact" then i respectfully request that you hire a wordsmith to fix your button's label.

Comment 5

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

This is the intended behavior of clone. If you want it to work differently on your installation, find out of the majority of your users agree with you and get a local customization.

If you can show that a majority of general users agree with you, we will consider reopening this bug.

Comment 7

[timeless]

how does one measure a majority of general users for bug databases which have user bases on the order of hundreds of thousands of users?

Comment 8

[Denis Roy]

FWIW, we just encountered this at Eclipse.  Use case: user opens one bug with requesting several enhancements, and we request one bug for each enhancement for easy tracking.  User then clones bug several times, needing to pick classification and product each time.

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=225895

Comment 9

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Hmm I hit this recently with my sumo work. Didn't realize I was cc'ed!

Yes, I would expect clone to keep the component etc. That's the hardest part to fill out.  My use case was that I needed to file a new bug for a similar task and wasn't sure how to fill it out.  I found an old one that was correct and hit clone.  *If* someone wants to file in a different component I think it's just as trivial to *change* component as it is to pick one from scratch.

IMO it seems like the clone function is being crippled to make up for a function that doesn't yet exist.  Clearly the people arguing for current behavior *really* want to be able to select multiple components on one page. 

Comment 10

[Hendrik Maryns]

Being the user refered to in c8, I think this is a very annoying bug.  Can’t the functionality be split up?

Some ideas:
- have ‘clone this bug’ redirect to a page which gives the possibility to choose either the behavior described in c0 or in c1, or even other possibilities
- have multiple ‘clone this bug’ links, /with more informative wording/ (IMHO this is less desirable, since it would increase screen clutter)
- a tradeoff: add a link ‘fill in product and component based on cloned bug’ to the top/bottom of the product chooser page.

Pity bug cloning is disabled on bmo, so we can’t test it here.  No need for it anyway??

Maybe reopen this bug and change the summary to ‘enhance bug cloning ability’? (Hm, I do like the title as it is.)

Comment 11

[GavinS]

Attachment: Patch to 'clone' a bug and yet keep classification/product

For reference, this is a simple customization patch that adds a new way to clone a bug, but keep the classification and product. Patch against 3.0.2.

Comment 12

[Denis Roy]

(In reply to comment #5)
> If you can show that a majority of general users agree with you, we will
> consider reopening this bug.

Please consider it.  As b.m.o. doesn't support cloning, you'll have to take our word for it  :-)  Bonus points awarded to us because now a patch has been submitted.

Comment 13

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

(In reply to comment #12)
> As b.m.o. doesn't support cloning

Sure it does. There's a "Clone This Bug" link in the bottom right of the page above the footer.

Comment 14

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Filed bug 450348 on making bmo's clone behave sanely via a local customization based on te patch in comment 11.

Comment 15

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Unfortunately the summary was useless and abusive, so that obscured any validity this bug had.

Probably what we should first do is re-work enter_bug so that Product is a drop-down and then other bits can be fixed w/ JavaScript (for those who have JS enabled, otherwise you'd still need a new page load). After that, we could have the product and component set by default to be the same and it'd be easy to change them.

Comment 16

[Denis Roy]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Sure it does. There's a "Clone This Bug" link in the bottom right of the page
> above the footer.

Hmm... All I see is "Format For Printing - XML".  Perhaps cloning on b.m.o. isn't available to civilians like myself.

Comment 17

[Denis Roy]

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=463055

Comment 18

[Jeffrey Huan]

Attachment: same problem

Thanks from tyiraluli1972.