[Libreoffice-qa] Try not to reopen bugs when anything more than a trivial amount of time has passed

[Michael Stahl]

On 24.03.2015 12:36, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> It generally doesn't make sense to reopen a bug after a few months has
> passed since it was closed.

indeed doing that is very annoying.  personally i've started to simply
ignore bugs in state REPOENED some time ago, they are generally very
confusing and frustrating to even read and if it's a real problem then
it will be eventually filed as a new bug anyway.

> a) The person its "assigned" to may have moved on, changed jobs, or died
> and so is not in a position to help anymore so the bug appears to
> "belong" to someone, but isn't really and anyone looking for bugs to fix
> will generally pass over it given that it seems to be assigned to
> someone already.
> 
> b) Lots of bugs are superficially similar but different causes. I mean
> if a document X crashes in 4.1, then was fine for 4.2 and 4.3 and then
> crashes in 4.4, the odds that the exact problem fixed in 4.2 was
> re-introduced in 4.4 are very low vs that a new different problem was
> introduced.
> 
> Better is to file a new bug with the exact means to reproduce, cc
> whoever fixed the similar previous problem and tag the bug as possibly
> related to the similar solved case.

yep, that's what the "see also" field is for, you can add the old bug there.

actually, would it be possible in our bugzilla to disallow a transition
from RESOLVED -> REOPENED except if the user is a well-known QA or
developer with a special bugzilla privilege?