536183 - Docs claim bug lifecycle is "hard-coded" despite that's no longer true

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Documentation, defect)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

"The life cycle, also known as work flow, of a bug is currently hardcoded into Bugzilla."

This is no longer true, and has confused at least one person. We should fix the docs to talk about editing statuses, resolutions and transitions, referencing section 3.12 on transitions, and 3.11 on Legal Values.

Gerv

Comment 1

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: New workflow (Bugzilla 4.0)

Here is the new diagram for 4.0. I put less important transitions as dashed lines. Does it need some improvements?

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: patch, v1

This patch applies to all supported branches + trunk.

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: patch, v1

Bah, I mixed three patches at once. Here is the correct one.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Comment on attachment 456776 [details] [diff] [review]
patch, v1

r=gerv.

Gerv

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Comment on attachment 456774 [details]
New workflow (Bugzilla 4.0)

It depends on how much change you have time for, but I think the following things would make this diagram a lot better:

- Minor transitions should be dotted, not dot-dashed, for greater differentiation.

- I think people expect flow charts to have straight lines with corners, rather than curves. This allows you to keep lines further apart and makes them easier to follow.

- Also, make every line start and end at a box; don't merge lines half way along.

- Make the UNCONFIRMED state have the same background colour as CONFIRMED and IN_PROGRESS; there are then just two background colours, one for Open and one for Closed.

- Have the "direct to CONFIRMED" path be the primary one (vertical arrow), without an explanation, and have the "into UNCONFIRMED" path be secondary, off to the side, with an explanation as follows:

"Bug is filed by a non-empowered user in a product where the UNCONFIRMED state is enabled"

Some text changes:

- "Bug confirmed" -> "Bug determined to be present"
- "Development stopped" -> Developer stops work on bug"
- "Development is finished with the bug" -> "Fix checked in"
- VERIFIED to REOPENED should be a minor transition
- "Bug is reopened" -> "Fix turns out to be wrong"
- CONFIRMED to RESOLVED is a major transition - most bugs go this way!
- "Bug immediately resolved" -> "Bug is not fixable"

I hope that's useful feedback :-)

Gerv

Comment 6

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Comment on attachment 456774 [details]
New workflow (Bugzilla 4.0)

Looks basically good. I agree with gerv that the arrows should be right angles instead of curved if possible, but I understand that this is basically identical to how the current one looks, so I'm not pressing for that now.

Comment 7

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  Of course, the new image only goes onto 4.0+.

Comment 8

[Frédéric Buclin]

I will update the graphic in a few minutes, so leaving the bug open for now.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/trunk/
modified docs/en/xml/using.xml
Committed revision 7354.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/4.0/
modified docs/en/xml/using.xml
Committed revision 7323.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/3.6/
modified docs/en/xml/using.xml
Committed revision 7137.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/3.4/
modified docs/en/xml/using.xml
Committed revision 6766.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/3.2/
modified docs/en/xml/using.xml
Committed revision 6387.

Comment 9

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: New workflow (Bugzilla 4.0), v2

New workflow, taking all comments from gerv into account.

Comment 10

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: New workflow, XML version

Here is the XML file generated by Dia for bzLifecycle.xml.

Comment 11

[Frédéric Buclin]

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/trunk/
modified docs/en/images/bzLifecycle.png
modified docs/en/images/bzLifecycle.xml
Committed revision 7358.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/4.0/
modified docs/en/images/bzLifecycle.png
modified docs/en/images/bzLifecycle.xml
Committed revision 7324.

Comment 12

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Comment on attachment 457188 [details]
New workflow (Bugzilla 4.0), v2

This is awesome. r=gerv.

However, if you had an appetite for tweaking it further:

- Main incoming line should be labelled "Bug filed"

- 3 of the arrows on the right side do not have labels. Not quite sure how to fix this without increasing complexity too much...

Gerv