1.1. Purpose and Scope of this Guide

Bugzilla is simply the best piece of bug-tracking software the world has ever seen. This document is intended to be the comprehensive guide to the installation, administration, maintenance, and use of the Bugzilla bug-tracking system.

This release of the Bugzilla Guide is the 2.16 release. It is so named that it may match the current version of Bugzilla. The numbering tradition stems from that used for many free software projects, in which even-numbered point releases (1.2, 1.14, etc.) are considered "stable releases", intended for public consumption; on the other hand, odd-numbered point releases (1.3, 2.09, etc.) are considered unstable development releases intended for advanced users, systems administrators, developers, and those who enjoy a lot of pain.

Newer revisions of the Bugzilla Guide follow the numbering conventions of the main-tree Bugzilla releases, available at http://www.bugzilla.org/. Intermediate releases will have a minor revision number following a period. The current version of Bugzilla, as of this writing (April 2nd, 2002) is 2.16; if something were seriously wrong with that edition of the Guide, subsequent releases would receive an additional dotted-decimal digit to indicate the update (2.16.1, 2.16.2, etc.). Got it? Good.