383194 - "Find a bug" search doesn't find bugs with matching keywords

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Bugzilla :: Query/Bug List, defect)

Description

[Tom Metro]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1
Build Identifier: 3.0+ (whatever is at mozilla.org)

See test case.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
2. enter: GetLongPathNameA  into the "Find a bug"
3. click "Find"
Actual Results:  
"Zarro Boogs found."

Expected Results:  
A bug list that includes:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=379738

which has the specified keyword in its summary.

Searching on a substring of that keyword, "GetLongPathName", should similarly turn up several bugs, but instead returns none.


Given that flaws in the search leads to the entry and subsequent processing of countless duplicate bugs at mozilla.org, it should be well worth the time investment to improve it. Lately I find that searches at bugzilla.mozilla.org either omit relevant results, or include way too many irrelevant results, making the job of finding exiting reports far harder than it should be. Years ago I used to use the full query page, but with so many product possibilities (a bug might be still relevant even if reported against a different product than being used, like Mozilla, FF, or TB), component possibilities, and other options, it has become difficult to manually tune a query without inadvertently omitting relevant results.

Comment 1

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

It does appear. Did you perhaps have the search only search Open bugs?

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

I confirm what Max says. There are 4 bugs matching "GetLongPathNameA". All 4 are resolved, so you probably forgot to select all statuses.

Comment 3

[Tom Metro]

Frédéric Buclin  In comment #2 wrote:
> ...you probably forgot to select all statuses.

Huh? I'm talking about the "Find a bug" box here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Where is there a mechanism for specifying which status to select?

(I'm aware of such fields on the regular search form, and I seem to recall that the find box accepts an extended search syntax - looking at the help I see something like "resolved GetLongPathName" or "status,summary:resolved,GetLongPathName" should do it, but neither returns the desired results.)

If the point of having that search box on the front page of bugzilla.mozilla.org is to let bug reporters find bugs for the purpose of avoiding duplicates, don't you want to include resolved bugs by default? Particularly duplicates that often have relevant keywords not mentioned in the main bug's summary. (This may be less about a Bugzilla flaw and more about usability of bugzilla.mozilla.org.)

In any case, I could have sworn the substring use case ("GetLongPathName") also failed, even when there were open bugs with that substring in the summary. (When I first encountered this problem I had just created two bug reports with that substring in the summary. Neither before or after filing those bugs were any bugs found using that string in the Find box. Only the full string, "GetLongPathNameW" (the correct match for the reports I filed).

But I can't reproduce this behavior now, using substrings found in currently open bugs.


> I confirm what Max says.

Thanks for looking into it.

Comment 4

[neal.krautz]

As an extension of this bug.  Not only does it not find what is sought, but the search engine is ineffective and returns hundreds of "matches" that are in no way related.  This is easily reproduced, no matter what you ask.  

This destroys confidence in finding whether a bug is already reported and is "begging" for duplicates.

Comment 5

[Andre Klapper]

(In reply to neal.krautz from comment #4)
> As an extension of this bug.  Not only does it not find what is sought, but
> the search engine is ineffective and returns hundreds of "matches" that are
> in no way related.

Feel free to provide an *exact* list of steps to reproduce in a new bug report as I have not experienced your problem as high-level comments don't help to reproduce.