README upon which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
</para>
<para>
<ulinkurl="mailto://tara@tequilarista.org">Tara
Hernandez</ulink> for keeping Bugzilla development going
strong after Terry left Mozilla.org
</para>
<para>
<ulinkurl="mailto://dkl@redhat.com">Dave Lawrence</ulink> for
providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's
customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for the "Red
Hat Bugzilla" appendix
</para>
<para>
<ulinkurl="mailto://endico@mozilla.org">Dawn Endico</ulink> for
being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with my incessant
questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools
</para>
<para>
Last but not least, all the members of the <ulink
url="news://news.mozilla.org/netscape/public/mozilla/webtools"> netscape.public.mozilla.webtools</ulink> newsgroup. Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.
</para>
<para>
Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions
to this documentation (in no particular order):
</para>
<para>
Zach Liption, Andrew Pearson, Spencer Smith, Eric Hanson, Kevin Brannen,
General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not
functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates, etc.
</member>
</simplelist>
</para>
</informalexample>
</example>
</para>
<para>
A "Milestone", or "Target Milestone" is a often a planned
future "Version" of a product. In many cases, though,
Milestones simply represent significant dates for a
developer. Having certain features in your Product is
frequently tied to revenue (money) the developer will
receive if the features work by the time she reaches the
Target Milestone. Target Milestones are a great tool to
organize your time. If someone will pay you $100,000 for
incorporating certain features by a certain date, those
features by that Milestone date become a very high
priority. Milestones tend to be highly malleable
creatures, though, that appear to be in reach but are out
of reach by the time the important day arrives.
</para>
<para>
The Bugzilla Project has set up Milestones for future
Bugzilla versions 2.14, 2.16, 2.18, 3.0, etc. However, a
Target Milestone can just as easily be a specific date,
code name, or weird alphanumeric combination, like "M19".
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Status Whiteboard:</emphasis>
(a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes
and tags to a bug.</para>
OK, now let's select the "Bugzilla" component from its scrollbox.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Keywords:</emphasis>
The administrator can define keywords which you can use to tag and
categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like crash
and regression.</para>
Skip down the page a bit -- do you see the "submit query" button?
Select it, and let's run
this query!
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Platform and OS:</emphasis>
These indicate the computing environment where the bug was
found.</para>
Congratulations! You've completed your first Query, and
have before you the Bug List of the author of this Guide,
Matthew P. Barnson (barnboy@trilobyte.net). If I'm doing
well, you'll have a cryptic "Zarro Boogs Found" message on
your screen. It is just a happy hacker's way of saying
"Zero Bugs Found". However, I am fairly certain I will
always have some bugs assigned to me that aren't done yet,
so you won't often see that message!
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>
<emphasis>Version:</emphasis>
I encourage you to click the bug numbers in the left-hand
column and examine my bugs. Also notice that if you click the
underlined links near the top of this page, they do not take
you to context-sensitive help here, but instead sort the
columns of bugs on the screen! When you need to sort your bugs
by priority, severity, or the people they are assigned to,
this is a tremendous timesaver.
</para>
<para>
A couple more interesting things about the Bug List page:
<simplelist>
<member><emphasis>Change Columns</emphasis>: by selecting
this link, you can show all kinds of information in the
Bug List</member>
<member><emphasis>Change several bugs at once</emphasis>: If
you have sufficient rights to change all the bugs shown in
the Bug List, you can mass-modify them. This is a big
time-saver.</member>
<member><emphasis>Send mail to bug owners</emphasis>: If you
have many related bugs, you can request an update from
every person who owns the bugs in the Bug List asking them
the status.</member>
<member><emphasis>Edit this query</emphasis>: If you didn't
get exactly the results you were looking for, you can
return to the Query page through this link and make small
revisions to the query you just made so you get more
accurate results.</member>
</simplelist>
</para>
<note>
<para>
There are many more options to the Bugzilla Query Page and
the Bug List than I have shown you. But this should be
enough for you to learn to get around. I encourage you to
check out the <ulink
url="http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/">Bugzilla Home Page</ulink> to learn about the Anatomy and Life Cycle of a Bug before continuing.
</para>
</note>
</section>
The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product which
have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a
Component have the particular problem the bug report is
about.</para>
</listitem>
<sectionid="bugreports">
<title>Creating and Managing Bug Reports</title>
<epigraph>
<para>And all this time, I thought we were taking bugs <emphasis>out</emphasis>...</para>
</epigraph>
<sectionid="bug-writing">
<title>Writing a Great Bug Report</title>
<para>
Before we plunge into writing your first bug report, I
encourage you to read some bug-writing guidelines. If you
are reading this document as part of a Bugzilla CVS checkout
or un-tarred Bugzilla distribution, you should be able to
read them by clicking <ulink
url="../../bugwritinghelp.html">here</ulink>. If you are reading this online, check out the Mozilla.org bug-writing guidelines at <ulinkurl="http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html">http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html</ulink>. While some of the advice is Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible, Specific bugs, isolating the Product you are using, the Version of the Product, the Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were using at the time of the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes for the bug that bit you.
</para>
<para>
While you are at it, why not learn how to find previously
reported bugs? Mozilla.org has published a great tutorial
<para>Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable
guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS"
drop-down boxes. If they are wrong, change them.</para>
<para>
Scroll down a bit on the subsequent page, until you see
the "Resolve bug, changing resolution to (dropdown box).
Normally, you would "Accept bug (change status to
ASSIGNED)", fix it, and then resolve. But in this case,
we're going to short-circuit the process because this
wasn't a real bug. Change the dropdown next to "Resolve
Bug" to "INVALID", make sure the radio button is marked
next to "Resolve Bug", then click "Commit".
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.</para>
<para>
Hey! It said it couldn't take the change in a big red
box! That's right, you must specify a Comment in order
to make this change. Select the "Back" button in your
browser, add a Comment, then try Resolving the bug with
INVALID status again. This time it should work.
</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>
You have now learned the basics of Bugzilla navigation,
entering a bug, and bug maintenance. I encourage you to
explore these features, and see what you can do with them!
We'll spend no more time on individual Bugs or Queries from
this point on, so you are on your own there.
</para>
<para>
But I'll give a few last hints!
</para>
<para>
There is a <ulink
url="http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/help.html">CLUE</ulink> on the Query page that will teach you more how to use the form.
</para>
<para>
If you click the hyperlink on the <ulink
url="http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/describecomponents.cgi">Component</ulink> box of the Query page, you will be presented a form that will describe what all the components are.
</para>
<para>
Possibly the most powerful feature of the Query page is the
<ulink
url="http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/booleanchart.html">Boolean Chart</ulink> section. It's a bit confusing to use the first time, but can provide unparalleled flexibility in your queries, allowing you to build extremely powerful requests.
</para>
<para>
Finally, you can build some nifty <ulink
url="http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/reports.cgi">Reports</ulink> using the "Bug Reports" link near the bottom of the query page, and also available via the "Reports" link at the footer of each page.
</para>
</section>
</section>
<sectionid="init4me">
<title>User Preferences</title>
<para>You can customise various aspects of Bugzilla, via the "Edit prefs"
link in the page footer, once you have logged in, e.g. to
<para>On this tab, you can change your basic Account Settings,
including your password, email address and real name. For security
reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your
<emphasis>current</emphasis>
password into the
<quote>Password</quote>
field. If you attempt to change your email address, a confirmation
email is sent to both the old and new addresses, with a link to use to
confirm the change. This helps to prevent account hijacking.</para>
<para>
On this page, you can change your basic Account Settings,
including your password and full name. For security reasons,
in order to change anything on this page you must type your
<emphasis>current</emphasis> password into the <quote>Old
Password</quote> field. If you wish to change your
password, type the new password you want into the <quote>New
Password</quote> field and again into the <quote>Re-enter
new password</quote> field to ensure you typed your new
password correctly. Select the <quote>Submit</quote> button
and you are done.
</para>
</section>
<sectionid="emailsettings">
<sectionid="emailsettings">
<title>Email Settings</title>
<para>On this tab you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent
you from Bugzilla, opting in our out depending on your relationship to
the bug and the change that was made to it. (Note that you can also do
client-side filtering using the X-Bugzilla-Reason header which Bugzilla
adds to all bugmail.)</para>
<para>By entering user email names, delineated by commas, into the
"Users to watch" text entry box you can receive a copy of all the
bugmail of other users (security settings permitting.) This powerful
functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change
projects, managers wish to get in touch with the issues faced by their
direct reports, or users go on vacation.</para>
<sectionid="notification"xreflabel="">
<title>Email Notification</title>
<para>
Here you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you
from Bugzilla. Although this is referred to as
<quote>Advanced Email Filtering Options</quote>, they are,
in fact, the standard email filter set. All of them are
self-explanatory, but you can use the filters in interesting
ways. For instance, some people (notably Quality Assurance
personnel) often only care to receive updates regarding a
bug when the bug changes state, so they can track bugs on
their flow charts and know when it is time to pull the bug
onto a quality assurance platform for inspection. Other
people set up email gateways to
<xreflinkend="bonsai"/> or <xreflinkend="tinderbox"/>, and
restrict which types of Bugzilla information are fed to
these systems..
</para>
</section>
<sectionid="newemailtech">
<title>New Email Technology</title>
<note>
<para>This option may not be available in all Bugzilla installations.
Ask your administrator.</para>
<para>
This option may not be available in all Bugzilla
installations, depending upon the preferences of the
systems administrator responsible for the setup of your
Bugzilla. However, if you really want this functionality,
ask her to "enable newemailtech in Params" and "make it
the default for all new users", referring her to the
Administration section of this Guide.
</para>
</note>
<para>
Disregard the warnings about "experimental and bleeding
edge"; the code to handle email in a cleaner manner than
that historically used for Bugzilla is quite robust and
well-tested now.
</para>
<para>
I recommend you enable the option, "Click here to sign up
(and risk any bugs)". Your email-box will thank you for it.
The fundamental shift in "newemailtech" is away from
standard UNIX "diff" output, which is quite ugly, to a
prettier, better laid-out email.
</para>
</section>
<sectionid="watchsettings">
<title>"Watching" Users</title>
<note>
<para>
This option may not be available in all Bugzilla
installations, depending upon the preferences of the
systems administrator responsible for the setup of your
Bugzilla. However, if you really want this functionality,
ask her to "enable watchers in Params".
</para>
</note>
<para>
By entering user email names into the "Users to watch" text
entry box, delineated by commas, you can watch bugs of other
users. This powerful functionality enables seamless
transitions as developers change projects, managers wish to
get in touch with the issues faced by their direct reports,
or users go on vacation. If any of these three situations
apply to you, you will undoubtedly find this feature quite
convenient.
</para>
</section>
</section>
<sectionid="footersettings">
<title>Page Footer</title>
<para>By default, this page is quite barren. However, if you explore
the Search page some more, you will find that you can store numerous
queries on the server, so if you regularly run a particular query it is
just a drop-down menu away. Once you have a stored query, you can come
here to request that it also be displayed in your page footer.</para>
<note>
<para>
By default, this page is quite barren. However, go explore
the Query Page some more; you will find that you can store
numerous queries on the server, so if you regularly run a
particular query it is just a drop-down menu away. On this
page of Preferences, if you have many stored queries you can
elect to have them always one-click away!
</para>
</note>
<para>
If you have many stored queries on the server, here you will
find individual drop-downs for each stored query. Each
drop-down gives you the option of that query appearing on the
footer of every page in Bugzilla! This gives you powerful
one-click access to any complex searches you may set up, and
is an excellent way to impress your boss...
</para>
<tip>
<para>By default, the "My Bugs" link appears at the bottom of
each page. However, this query gives you both the bugs you
have reported, as well as those you are assigned. One of
the most common uses for this page is to remove the "My
Bugs" link, replacing it with two other queries, commonly
called "My Bug Reports" and "My Bugs" (but only referencing
bugs assigned to you). This allows you to distinguish those
bugs you have reported from those you are assigned. I
commonly set up complex Boolean queries in the Query page
and link them to my footer in this page. When they are
significantly complex, a one-click reference can save hours
of work.</para>
</tip>
</section>
<sectionid="permissionsettings">
<title>Permissions</title>
<para>This is a purely informative page which outlines your current
permissions on this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you
are in, and whether you can edit bugs or perform various administration
functions.</para>
<para>
This is a purely informative page which outlines your current
permissions on this installation of Bugzilla. If you have
permissions to grant certain permissions to other users, the
"other users" link appears on this page as well as the footer.
For more information regarding user administration, please
consult the Administration section of this Guide.
</para>
</section>
</section>
<sectionid="usingbz-conc">
<title>Using Bugzilla-Conclusion</title>
<para>
Thank you for reading through this portion of the Bugzilla
Guide. I anticipate it may not yet meet the needs of all
readers. If you have additional comments or corrections to
make, please submit your contributions to the <ulink
url="mailto://mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org">mozilla-webtools</ulink> mailing list/newsgroup. The mailing list is mirrored to the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup, and the newsgroup is mirrored to mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org
