Using BugzillaIntroductionThis section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There
is a Bugzilla test installation, called
Landfill, which you are
welcome to play with (if it's up). However, not all of the Bugzilla
installations there will necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled,
and different installations run different versions, so some things may not
quite work as this document describes.Create a Bugzilla AccountIf you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account.
Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of
Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're
test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL:
.
Click the
Open a new Bugzilla account
link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the
spaces provided, then click
Create Account
.Within moments, you should receive an email to the address
you provided, which contains your login name (generally the
same as the email address), and a password.
This password is randomly generated, but can be
changed to something more memorable.Click the
Log In
link in the footer at the bottom of the page in your browser,
enter your email address and password into the spaces provided, and
click
Login.
You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies to remember you are
logged in so, unless you have cookies disabled or your IP address changes,
you should not have to log in again.Anatomy of a BugThe core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular
bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts.
Bug 1 on Landfill
is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks;
clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that
particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every
installation of Bugzilla.Product and Component:
Bugs are divided up by Product and Component, with a Product
having one or more Components in it. For example,
bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several
Components:
Administration:
Administration of a Bugzilla installation.Bugzilla-General:
Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans
multiple components.Creating/Changing Bugs:
Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.Documentation:
The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.Email:
Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.Installation:
The installation process of Bugzilla.Query/Buglist:
Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
buglists.Reporting/Charting:
Getting reports from Bugzilla.User Accounts:
Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective.
Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in,
etc.User Interface:
General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not
functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates,
etc.Status and Resolution:
These define exactly what state the bug is in - from not even
being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the fix
confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for
Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the
context-sensitive help for those items.Assigned To:
The person responsible for fixing the bug.*URL:
A URL associated with the bug, if any.Summary:
A one-sentence summary of the problem.*Status Whiteboard:
(a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes
and tags to a bug.*Keywords:
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.Platform and OS:
These indicate the computing environment where the bug was
found.Version:
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.Priority:
The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her bugs.
It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.Severity:
This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker
("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You
can also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement
request.*Target:
(a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is to
be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future
Bugzilla versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not
restricted to numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such
as dates.Reporter:
The person who filed the bug.CC list:
A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.Attachments:
You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there
are any attachments, they are listed in this section. Attachments are
normally stored in the Bugzilla database, unless they are marked as
Big Files, which are stored directly on disk and (unlike attachments
kept in the database) may be deleted at some future time.
*Dependencies:
If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed (depends
on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their
numbers are recorded here.*Votes:
Whether this bug has any votes.Additional Comments:
You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have
something worthwhile to say.Life Cycle of a Bug
The life cycle, also known as work flow, of a bug is currently hardcoded
into Bugzilla. contains a graphical
repsentation of this life cycle. If you wish to customize this image for
your site, the diagram file
is available in Dia's
native XML format.
Lifecycle of a Bugzilla BugSearching for BugsThe Bugzilla Search page is the interface where you can find
any bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You
can play with it here:
.The Search page has controls for selecting different possible
values for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some
fields, multiple values can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla
returns bugs where the content of the field matches any one of the selected
values. If none is selected, then the field can take any value.Once you've run a search, you can save it as a Saved Search, which
appears in the page footer.Boolean Charts
Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts.
The boolean charts further restrict the set of results
returned by a query. It is possible to search for bugs
based on elaborate combinations of critera.
The simplest boolean searches have only one term. These searches
permit the selected left field
to be compared using a
selectable operator to a
specified value.
Using the "And," "Or," and "Add Another Boolean Chart" buttons,
additonal terms can be included in the query, further
altering the list of bugs returned by the query.
There are three fields in each row of a boolean search.
Field:
the items being searched
Operator:
the comparison operator
Value:
the value to which the field is being compared
Pronoun Substitution
Sometimes, a query needs to compare a field containing
a user's ID (such as ReportedBy) with
a user's ID (such as the user running the query or the user
to whom each bug is assigned). When the operator is either
"equals" or "notequals", the value can be "%reporter%",
"%assignee%", "%qacontact%", or "%user%." The user pronoun
referes to the user who is executing the query or, in the case
of whining reports, the user who will be the recipient
of the report. The reporter, assignee, and qacontact
pronouns refer to the corresponding fields in the bug.
Negation
At first glance, negation seems redundant. Rather than
searching for
NOT("summary" "contains the string" "foo"),
one could search for
("summary" "does not contain the string" "foo").
However, the search
("CC" "does not contain the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where anyone on the CC list did not contain
"@mozilla.org" while
NOT("CC" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where there was nobody on the CC list who
did contain the string. Similarly, the use of negation also permits
complex expressions to be built using terms OR'd together and then
negated. Negation permits queries such as
NOT(("product" "equals" "update") OR
("component" "equals" "Documentation"))
to find bugs that are neither
in the update product or in the documentation component or
NOT(("commenter" "equals" "%assignee%") OR
("component" "equals" "Documentation"))
to find non-documentation
bugs on which the assignee has never commented.
Multiple Charts
The terms within a single row of a boolean chart are all
constraints on a single piece of data. If you are looking for
a bug that has two different people cc'd on it, then you need
to use two boolean charts. A search for
("cc" "contains the string" "foo@") AND
("cc" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
would return only bugs with "foo@mozilla.org" on the cc list.
If you wanted bugs where there is someone on the cc list
containing "foo@" and someone else containing "@mozilla.org",
then you would need two boolean charts.
First chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "foo@")
Second chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
The bugs listed will be only the bugs where ALL the charts are true.
Bug ListsIf you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.
The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be
sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be
accessed using the links at the bottom of the list:
Long Format:
this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields
of each bug.CSV:
get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g.
a spreadsheet.RSS
get the buglist as an RSS 1.0 feed. Copy this link into your
favorite feed reader. If you are using Firefox, you can also
save the list as a live bookmark by clicking the live bookmark
icon in the status bar. To limit the number of bugs in the feed,
add a limit=n parameter to the URL.iCalendar
Get the buglist as an iCalendar file. Each bug is represented as a
to-do item in the imported calendar.Change Columns:
change the bug attributes which appear in the list.Change several bugs at once:
If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same
change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their
assignee.Send mail to bug assignees:
Sends mail to the assignees of all bugs on the list.Edit Search:
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.Remember Search As:
You can give a search a name and remember it; a link will appear
in your page footer giving you quick access to run it again later.
If you would like to access the bug list from another program
it is often useful to have the list returned in something other
than HTML. By adding the ctype=type parameter into the bug list URL
you can specify several alternate formats. The supported formats
are: Comma Separated Values (ctype=csv), iCalendar (ctype=ics),
RDF Site Summary (RSS) 1.0 (ctype=rss), ECMAScript, also known
as JavaScript (ctype=js), and finally Resource Description Framework
RDF/XML (ctype=rdf).
Filing BugsYears of bug writing experience has been distilled for your
reading pleasure into the
Bug Writing Guidelines.
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.The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:Go to
Landfill
in your browser and click
Enter a new bug report.
Select a product - any one will do.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.Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.Try to make sure that everything said in the summary is also
said in the first comment. Summaries are often updated and this will
ensure your original information is easily accessible.
You do not need to put "any" or similar strings in the URL field.
If there is no specific URL associated with the bug, leave this
field blank.
If you feel a bug you filed was incorrectly marked as a
DUPLICATE of another, please question it in your bug, not
the bug it was duped to. Feel free to CC the person who duped it
if they are not already CCed.
Patch ViewerViewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to
lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that
raw patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed
to fix that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and
integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.Patch viewer allows you to:View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying
to interpret the contents of the patch.See the difference between two patches.Get more context in a patch.Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy
reading.Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or
reviewGo to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and
cross-references for the part of the patch you are looking atCreate a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no
matter what format it came fromViewing Patches in Patch ViewerThe main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the
"Diff" link next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may
also do this within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As
Diff" button in the Edit Attachment screen.Seeing the Difference Between Two PatchesTo see the difference between two patches, you must first view the
newer patch in Patch Viewer. Then select the older patch from the
dropdown at the top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and
this patch") and click the "Diff" button. This will show you what
is new or changed in the newer patch.Getting More Context in a PatchTo get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at
the top of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter.
This will give you that many lines of context before and after each
change. Alternatively, you can click on the "File" link there and it
will show each change in the full context of the file. This feature only
works against files that were diffed using "cvs diff".Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a PatchTo view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a
patch is absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a
time), you can click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to
expand it or collapse it). If you want to collapse all files or expand
all files, you can click the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the
top of the page.Linking to a Section of a PatchTo link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be
able to give someone a URL to show them which part you are talking
about) you simply click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The
resulting URL can be copied and used in discussion. (Copy Link
Location in Mozilla works as well.)Going to Bonsai and LXRTo go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in,
you can click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are
interested in. This works even if the patch is against an old
version of the file, since Bonsai stores all versions of the file.To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header
(unfortunately, since LXR only does the most recent version, line
numbers are likely to rot).Creating a Unified DiffIf the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it
into a unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top
of the page.Hints and TipsThis section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices
that have been developed.AutolinkificationBugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will
produce less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text.
However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain
sorts of text in comments. For example, the text
"http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link:
.
Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:
bug 12345comment 7bug 23456, comment 53attachment 4321mailto:george@example.comgeorge@example.comftp://ftp.mozilla.orgMost other sorts of URLA corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment,
you should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified
for the convenience of others.
QuicksearchQuicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses
metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing
"foo|bar"
into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the
summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding
":BazProduct" would
search only in that product.
You can use it to find a bug by its number or its alias, too.
You'll find the Quicksearch box in Bugzilla's footer area.
On Bugzilla's front page, there is an additional
Help
link which details how to use it.CommentsIf you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if
either you have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it.
Otherwise, you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail.
To take an example: a user can set up their account to filter out messages
where someone just adds themselves to the CC field of a bug
(which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself to the CC field,
and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that person
gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.
Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable,
if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style
four line ASCII art creations are not.
Attachments
Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data,
such as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't
bloat the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to
receive fat, useless mails.
Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if
you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.
Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one
CSS file and an image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in
reverse order and edit the referring file so that they point to the
attached files. This way, the test case works immediately
out of the bug.
Bugzilla stores and uses a Content-Type for each attachment
(e.g. text/html). To download an attachment as a different
Content-Type (e.g. application/xhtml+xml), you can override this
using a 'content-type' parameter on the URL, e.g.
&content-type=text/plain.
If you have a really large attachment, something that does not need to
be recorded forever (as most attachments are), you can mark your
attachment as a Big File, Assuming the administrator of the
installation has enabled this feature. Big Files are stored directly on
disk instead of in the database, and can be deleted when it is no longer
needed. The maximum size of a Big File is normally larger than the
maximum size of a regular attachment.
Dependency Tree
On the Dependency tree page linked from each bug
page, you can see the dependency relationship from the bug as a
tree structure.
You can change how much depth to show, and you can hide resolved bugs
from this page. You can also collaps/expand dependencies for
each bug on the tree view.
User PreferencesOnce you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of
Bugzilla via the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer.
The preferences are split into three tabs:Account PreferencesOn this tab, you can change your basic account information,
including your password, email address and real name. For security
reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your
current
password into the
Password
field at the top of the page.
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.General Preferences
This tab allows you to change several Bugzilla behavior.
Field separator character for CSV files -
This controls separator character used in CSV formatted Bug List.
After changing bugs - This controls which bugs or no bugs
are shown in the page after you changed bugs.
You can select the bug you've changed this time, or the next
bug of the list.
Add individual bugs to saved searches - this controls
whether you can add individual bugs to saved searches
or you can't.
When viewing a bug, show comments in this order -
This controls the order of comments, you can select below:
Initial description, comment 1, comment 2, ...Initial description, last comment, ..., comment 2, comment 1.Initial last comment, ..., comment 2, comment 1, description.
Show a quip at the top of each bug list - This controls
whether a quip will be shown on the Bug list page or not.
Email Preferences
This tab controls the amount of email Bugzilla sends you.
The first item on this page is marked Users to watch.
When you enter one or more comma-delineated user accounts (usually email
addresses) into the text entry box, you will receive a copy of all the
bugmail those users are sent (security settings permitting).
This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers
change projects or users go on holiday.
The ability to watch other users may not be available in all
Bugzilla installations. If you don't see this feature, and feel
that you need it, speak to your administrator.
In general, users have almost complete control over how much (or
how little) email Bugzilla sends them. If you want to receive the
maximum amount of email possible, click the Enable All
Mail button. If you don't want to receive any email from
Bugzilla at all, click the Disable All Mail button.
Your Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving
bugmail by adding the user's name to the
data/nomail file. This is a drastic step
best taken only for disabled accounts, as it overrides
the user's individual mail preferences.
If you'd like to set your bugmail to something besides
'Completely ON' and 'Completely OFF', the
Field/recipient specific options table
allows you to do just that. The rows of the table
define events that can happen to a bug -- things like
attachments being added, new comments being made, the
priority changing, etc. The columns in the table define
your relationship with the bug:
Reporter - Where you are the person who initially
reported the bug. Your name/account appears in the
Reporter: field.
Assignee - Where you are the person who has been
designated as the one responsible for the bug. Your
name/account appears in the Assigned To:
field of the bug.
QA Contact - You are one of the designated
QA Contacts for the bug. Your account appears in the
QA Contact: text-box of the bug.
CC - You are on the list CC List for the bug.
Your account appears in the CC: text box
of the bug.
Voter - You have placed one or more votes for the bug.
Your account appears only if someone clicks on the
Show votes for this bug link on the bug.
Some columns may not be visible for your installation, depending
on your site's configuration.
To fine-tune your bugmail, decide the events for which you want
to receive bugmail; then decide if you want to receive it all
the time (enable the checkbox for every column), or only when
you have a certain relationship with a bug (enable the checkbox
only for those columns). For example: if you didn't want to
receive mail when someone added themselves to the CC list, you
could uncheck all the boxes in the CC Field Changes
line. As another example, if you never wanted to receive email
on bugs you reported unless the bug was resolved, you would
un-check all boxes in the Reporter column
except for the one on the The bug is resolved or
verified row.
Bugzilla adds the X-Bugzilla-Reason header to
all bugmail it sends, describing the recipient's relationship
(AssignedTo, Reporter, QAContact, CC, or Voter) to the bug.
This header can be used to do further client-side filtering.
Two items not in the table (Email me when someone
asks me to set a flag and Email me when someone
sets a flag I asked for) define how you want to
receive bugmail with regards to flags. Their use is quite
straightforward; enable the checkboxes if you want Bugzilla to
send you mail under either of the above conditions.
By default, Bugzilla sends out email regardless of who made the
change... even if you were the one responsible for generating
the email in the first place. If you don't care to receive bugmail
from your own changes, check the box marked Only email me
reports of changes made by other people.
PermissionsThis 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.Reports and ChartsAs well as the standard buglist, Bugzilla has two more ways of
viewing sets of bugs. These are the reports (which give different
views of the current state of the database) and charts (which plot
the changes in particular sets of bugs over time.)Reports
A report is a view of the current state of the bug database.
You can run either an HTML-table-based report, or a graphical
line/pie/bar-chart-based one. The two have different pages to
define them, but are close cousins - once you've defined and
viewed a report, you can switch between any of the different
views of the data at will.
Both report types are based on the idea of defining a set of bugs
using the standard search interface, and then choosing some
aspect of that set to plot on the horizontal and/or vertical axes.
You can also get a form of 3-dimensional report by choosing to have
multiple images or tables.
So, for example, you could use the search form to choose "all
bugs in the WorldControl product", and then plot their severity
against their component to see which component had had the largest
number of bad bugs reported against it.
Once you've defined your parameters and hit "Generate Report",
you can switch between HTML, CSV, Bar, Line and Pie. (Note: Pie
is only available if you didn't define a vertical axis, as pie
charts don't have one.) The other controls are fairly self-explanatory;
you can change the size of the image if you find text is overwriting
other text, or the bars are too thin to see.
Charts
A chart is a view of the state of the bug database over time.
Bugzilla currently has two charting systems - Old Charts and New
Charts. Old Charts have been part of Bugzilla for a long time; they
chart each status and resolution for each product, and that's all.
They are deprecated, and going away soon - we won't say any more
about them.
New Charts are the future - they allow you to chart anything you
can define as a search.
Both charting forms require the administrator to set up the
data-gathering script. If you can't see any charts, ask them whether
they have done so.
An individual line on a chart is called a data set.
All data sets are organised into categories and subcategories. The
data sets that Bugzilla defines automatically use the Product name
as a Category and Component names as Subcategories, but there is no
need for you to follow that naming scheme with your own charts if
you don't want to.
Data sets may be public or private. Everyone sees public data sets in
the list, but only their creator sees private data sets. Only
administrators can make data sets public.
No two data sets, even two private ones, can have the same set of
category, subcategory and name. So if you are creating private data
sets, one idea is to have the Category be your username.
Creating Charts
You create a chart by selecting a number of data sets from the
list, and pressing Add To List for each. In the List Of Data Sets
To Plot, you can define the label that data set will have in the
chart's legend, and also ask Bugzilla to Sum a number of data sets
(e.g. you could Sum data sets representing RESOLVED, VERIFIED and
CLOSED in a particular product to get a data set representing all
the resolved bugs in that product.)
If you've erroneously added a data set to the list, select it
using the checkbox and click Remove. Once you add more than one
data set, a "Grand Total" line
automatically appears at the bottom of the list. If you don't want
this, simply remove it as you would remove any other line.
You may also choose to plot only over a certain date range, and
to cumulate the results - that is, to plot each one using the
previous one as a baseline, so the top line gives a sum of all
the data sets. It's easier to try than to explain :-)
Once a data set is in the list, one can also perform certain
actions on it. For example, one can edit the
data set's parameters (name, frequency etc.) if it's one you
created or if you are an administrator.
Once you are happy, click Chart This List to see the chart.
Creating New Data Sets
You may also create new data sets of your own. To do this,
click the "create a new data set" link on the Create Chart page.
This takes you to a search-like interface where you can define
the search that Bugzilla will plot. At the bottom of the page,
you choose the category, sub-category and name of your new
data set.
If you have sufficient permissions, you can make the data set public,
and reduce the frequency of data collection to less than the default
seven days.
Flags
A flag is a kind of status that can be set on bugs or attachments
to indicate that the bugs/attachments are in a certain state.
Each installation can define its own set of flags that can be set
on bugs or attachments.
If your installation has defined a flag, you can set or unset that flag,
and if your administrator has enabled requesting of flags, you can submit
a request for another user to set the flag.
To set a flag, select either "+" or "-" from the drop-down menu next to
the name of the flag in the "Flags" list. The meaning of these values are
flag-specific and thus cannot be described in this documentation,
but by way of example, setting a flag named "review" to "+" may indicate
that the bug/attachment has passed review, while setting it to "-"
may indicate that the bug/attachment has failed review.
To unset a flag, click its drop-down menu and select the blank value.
If your administrator has enabled requests for a flag, request a flag
by selecting "?" from the drop-down menu and then entering the username
of the user you want to set the flag in the text field next to the menu.
A set flag appears in bug reports and on "edit attachment" pages with the
abbreviated username of the user who set the flag prepended to the
flag name. For example, if Jack sets a "review" flag to "+", it appears
as Jack: review [ + ]
A requested flag appears with the user who requested the flag prepended
to the flag name and the user who has been requested to set the flag
appended to the flag name within parentheses. For example, if Jack
asks Jill for review, it appears as Jack: review [ ? ] (Jill).
You can browse through open requests made of you and by you by selecting
'My Requests' from the footer. You can also look at open requests limited
by other requesters, requestees, products, components, and flag names from
this page. Note that you can use '-' for requestee to specify flags with
'no requestee' set.
Whining
Whining is a feature in Bugzilla that can regularly annoy users at
specified times. Using this feature, users can execute saved searches
at specific times (i.e. the 15th of the month at midnight) or at
regular intervals (i.e. every 15 minutes on Sundays). The results of the
searches are sent to the user, either as a single email or as one email
per bug, along with some descriptive text.
Throughout this section it will be assumed that all users are members
of the bz_canusewhines group, membership in which is required in order
to use the Whining system. You can easily make all users members of
the bz_canusewhines group by setting the User RegExp to ".*" (without
the quotes).
Also worth noting is the bz_canusewhineatothers group. Members of this
group can create whines for any user or group in Bugzilla using a
extended form of the whining interface. Features only available to
members of the bz_canusewhineatothers group will be noted in the
appropriate places.
For whining to work, a special Perl script must be executed at regular
intervals. More information on this is available in
.
This section does not cover the whineatnews.pl script. See
for more information on
The Whining Cron.
The Event
The whining system defines an "Event" as one or more queries being
executed at regular intervals, with the results of said queries (if
there are any) being emailed to the user. Events are created by
clicking on the "Add new event" button.
Once a new event is created, the first thing to set is the "Email
subject line". The contents of this field will be used in the subject
line of every email generated by this event. In addition to setting a
subject, space is provided to enter some descriptive text that will be
included at the top of each message (to help you in understanding why
you received the email in the first place).
The next step is to specify when the Event is to be run (the Schedule)
and what searches are to be performed (the Queries).
Whining Schedule
Each whining event is associated with zero or more schedules. A
schedule is used to specify when the query (specified below) is to be
run. A new event starts out with no schedules (which means it will
never run, as it is not scheduled to run). To add a schedule, press
the "Add a new schedule" button.
Each schedule includes an interval, which you use to tell Bugzilla
when the event should be run. An event can be run on certain days of
the week, certain days of the month, during weekdays (defined as
Monday through Friday), or every day.
Be careful if you set your event to run on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of
the month, as your event may not run exactly when expected. If you
want your event to run on the last day of the month, select "Last day
of the month" as the interval.
Once you have specified the day(s) on which the event is to be run, you
should now specify the time at which the event is to be run. You can
have the event run at a certain hour on the specified day(s), or
every hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour on the specified day(s).
If a single schedule does not execute an event as many times as you
would want, you can create another schedule for the same event. For
example, if you want to run an event on days whose numbers are
divisible by seven, you would need to add four schedules to the event,
setting the schedules to run on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th (one day
per schedule) at whatever time (or times) you choose.
If you are a member of the bz_canusewhineatothers group, then you
will be presented with another option: "Mail to". Using this you
can control who will receive the emails generated by this event. You
can choose to send the emails to a single user (identified by email
address) or a single group (identified by group name). To send to
multiple users or groups, create a new schedule for each additional
user/group.
Whining Queries
Each whining event is associated with zero or more queries. A query is
a saved search that is executed on the schedule specified (see above).
You start out with zero queries attached to the event (which means that
the event will not run, as there will never be any results to return).
To add a query, press the "Add a new query" button.
The first field to examine in your new query is the Sort field. Queries
are executed, and results returned, in the order specified by the Sort
field. Queries with lower Sort values will run before queries with
higher Sort values.
The next field to examine is the Search field. This is where you
choose the actual search that is to be run. Instead of defining search
parameters here, you are asked to choose from the list of saved
searches (the same list that appears at the bottom of every Bugzilla
page). You are only allowed to choose from searches that you have
saved yourself (the default saved search, "My Bugs", is not a valid
choice). If you do not have any saved searches, you can take this
opportunity to create one (see ).
When running queries, the whining system acts as if you are the user
executing the query. This means that the whining system will ignore
bugs that match your query, but that you can not access.
Once you have chosen the saved search to be executed, give the query a
descriptive title. This title will appear in the email, above the
results of the query. If you choose "One message per bug", the query
title will appear at the top of each email that contains a bug matching
your query.
Finally, decide if the results of the query should be sent in a single
email, or if each bug should appear in its own email.
Think carefully before checking the "One message per bug" box. If
you create a query that matches thousands of bugs, you will receive
thousands of emails!
Saving Your Changes
Once you have defined at least one schedule, and created at least one
query, go ahead and "Update/Commit". This will save your Event and make
it available for immediate execution.
If you ever feel like deleting your event, you may do so using the
"Remove Event" button in the upper-right corner of each Event. You
can also modify an existing event, so long as you "Update/Commit"
after completing your modifications.