show_bug.cgi display layout

[Gervase Markham]

Bill Barry wrote:
> Priorities describe what a *programmer* and/or his/her superiors feel 
> should be done, and a general order of how to do them.

Right.

> While an enhancement does not have a severity in the usual sense of the 
> word (the impact that the defect has in its existing form as the report 
> is filed), the aspects of implementing an enhancement (a modification of 
> the system to allow a new use or better use of some system aspect) do 
> indeed have an impact on the system, and hence a risk assessment 
> including the details of how much an impact that enhancement will cause 
> justifies the severity of an enhancement.

Severity is not the result of a risk assessment on the impact of a fix. 
It's a measurement of how much of a problem the bug is for how many 
users. If the thing in question is a problem for users in that sense, 
then fixing it isn't an enhancement.

> Another aspect of bug 9412 is that there are bugs in bugzilla that are 
> neither defects (on the product itself) nor enhancements. 

Such as what? And is Bugzilla actually appropriate for tracking them?

> In my opinion the Milestone field is a mistake. I think it would have 
> been superior to use special milestone bugs and dependencies to make it 
> very simple to see how multiple bugs are related. A milestone bug would 
> also have the added benefit of having a deadline.

You could implement any bug grouping in terms of dependencies - we could 
eliminate the OS field and have an "OS/2" tracking bug on which all OS/2 
bugs depend. You would need to argue why Milestone is uniquely suitable 
for abolishment and replacement in this way.

It would certainly make searching harder to do. How do you search for 
bugs fixed in the last three releases? "Depends on bug 12342, 16536 and 
19354". Hang on - or was it 19345? :-)

Gerv