DoctorMo's Blog

This is the lighting talk I would have tried to fit into 5 minutes at UDS; but because I’ll be going to the Libre Graphics Meeting in Montreal instead; I thought it better to post the talk on my blog and get you all interested in the subject.

We’re after the release of Ubuntu 11.04. What to think about the many, many bugs we’ve fixed…

Bugs are breaks in the intended function of the software.

Bug reports are little packets of information for developers, they help point out where their software is broken.

Bug discussions are comments after the report which contain a dialogue between the developers trying to fix the issue and the people who can test it and provide more information.

So what do you do if you have a problem, but you’re not sure if it’s a bug? Perhaps the system was always intended to work like that?

What we need in these instance are Issue Reports, these are little packets of information which describe in user context what the issues the user is having. They can result into either support requests, blueprints or bug reports. they’re a proto-step to many divergent paths for getting stuff done.

How do we deal with issue reports in launchpad? At the moment we mash issue reports into bug reports with special tags. We also spray them into answers, askubuntu, irc, mailing-lists and brainstorm randomly based on what the reporter knows and what the reporter weighs up on the issue.

So how would I see a user centric addition fitting into our existing Launchpad ecosystem? Basically like this:

What are your thoughts? Do you like the ideas and do you think they would improve flow of relevant information?

I just did an odd thing with my bug report. lp:#429926, I attached a video which attempts to explain the problem.

I didn’t do this at first, at first I just described the bug as I have in the past. But JazzyNico’s not reproducible response got me thinking of how I could show this bug as being reproducible. So using gtk-recordMyDesktop and my handy usb headset I made a video recording on my desktop while I showed the problem and how to reproduce it.

I double checked with some launchpad people to make sure I wasn’t uploading anything too big or crazy. They seem happy with it so long as it’s not too big. And recordMyDesktop saves as ogg vorbis/theora videos, so artefacts are kept low. I could have uploaded to blip.tv or some other video site, but I think they would have converted to mpeg, further degrading the video.

Have other people done this?