your RESOLVED->CLOSED changes

[Nathanael Nerode]

Giovanni Bajo wrote:
> Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>with these messages. May I ask you to discuss such issues on the main
>>>mailing list before doing it? We (bughunters) are trying to mantain Sure.
>>
>>>and unmantainable. Moreover, we have bugzilla rights to do such batch
>>>changes without spamming gcc-bugs.
> 
> 
>>I wasn't actually batching them, you know... I caught at least three
>>mis-resolved bugs in the process. :-/
> 
> 
> Which ones? Were they human errors or script errors?

Well, there was a pair which were each closed as "duplicates" of the 
other one. :-)  That's a sort of human error, but it's also 
script-catchable.

There was another one which I'm guessing was in a somewhat bogus state 
in GNATS (which allowed some strange combinations).  The last message 
was on the order of "I think this is invalid, could someone check?", so 
it wasn't supposed to be closed.

There were also a couple marked as duplicates of other bugs for unknown 
reasons, since they weren't; in one case, someone had said "I think this 
is a duplicate of #x" and someone else had said "No, it isn't."

 >Eric brought up the same point. What I cannot understand is for whom 
 >this distinction is useful. Because it's surely not for developers, nor
Yes, it is.  When a user reports a bug which is fixed on mainline we can 
say "Dupe of bug xxx, will be fixed in the next version."

It also makes for an easier way to get a list of bugs "fixed in this 
version" for each release; one can just run through the 'verified' bugs 
looking for the fixed ones.  Of course, there would have to be a mass 
run-through (and closure of most) 'verified' bugs around the time of 
each release.  One could probably close all which were fixed before the 
release branch en masse and generate a list of fixed bugs automatically 
from that.

 >for users which rarely greps in the bug database before submitting, 
and >not among closed bugs anyway.
Well, they should. :-)  And maybe we could change the default search for 
users to search 'verified' bugs as well as open bugs?

 >I don't know the details of the conversion process, but I see that 99% 
 >of the RESOLVED bugs in bugzilla are the bugs that were identified as
 >duplicates of other bugs. If there are mistakes in this, I think the 
 >best way would be to check manually all those entries, reopening the 
 >ones which are misresolved, and then batch-convert the others to 
CLOSED >without spamming gcc-bugs.
OK, that sounds like an excellent idea.

--Nathanael