The Bugzilla Guide - 2.17.7 Development Release
The Bugzilla Team
2004-01-24
This is the documentation for Bugzilla, a bug-tracking system from
mozilla.org. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that
tracks millions of bugs and issues for hundreds of organizations
around the world.
The most current version of this document can always be found on the
Bugzilla Documentation Page.
_________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
2. Installing Bugzilla
2.1. Installation
2.2. Configuration
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
2.4. OS-Specific Installation Notes
2.5. Troubleshooting
3. Administering Bugzilla
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
3.2. User Administration
3.3. Products
3.4. Components
3.5. Versions
3.6. Milestones
3.7. Voting
3.8. Groups and Group Security
3.9. Upgrading to New Releases
4. Customising Bugzilla
4.1. Template Customization
4.2. Template Hooks
4.3. Customizing Who Can Change What
4.4. Modifying Your Running System
4.5. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
4.6. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
5. Using Bugzilla
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
5.4. Searching for Bugs
5.5. Bug Lists
5.6. Filing Bugs
5.7. Patch Viewer
5.8. Hints and Tips
5.9. User Preferences
5.10. Reports
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. Contrib
B.1. Command-line Search Interface
C. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
C.1. Instructions
C.2. Download Locations
D. GNU Free Documentation License
0. Preamble
1. Applicability and Definition
2. Verbatim Copying
3. Copying in Quantity
4. Modifications
5. Combining Documents
6. Collections of Documents
7. Aggregation with Independent Works
8. Translation
9. Termination
10. Future Revisions of this License
How to use this License for your documents
Glossary
List of Examples
3-1. Upgrading using CVS
3-2. Upgrading using the tarball
3-3. Upgrading using patches
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
This document is copyright (c) 2000-2004 by the various Bugzilla
contributors who wrote it.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and
with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in
Appendix D.
If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or
publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact the
Bugzilla Team.
_________________________________________________________________
1.2. Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Follow
the instructions herein at your own risk. This document may contain
errors and inaccuracies that may damage your system, cause your
partner to leave you, your boss to fire you, your cats to pee on your
furniture and clothing, and global thermonuclear war. Proceed with
caution.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". We
wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux; it is an extremely
versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an ideal
operating environment for Bugzilla.
Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure
that all exploitable bugs have been fixed, security holes surely exist
in any piece of code. Great care should be taken both in the
installation and usage of this software. The Bugzilla development team
members assume no liability for your use of Bugzilla. You have the
source code, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to ensure
your security needs are met.
_________________________________________________________________
1.3. New Versions
This is the 2.17.7 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to
match the current version of Bugzilla. This version of the guide, like
its associated Bugzilla version, is a development version.
The latest version of this guide can always be found at
http://www.bugzilla.org, or checked out via CVS by following the
Mozilla CVS instructions and check out the
mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ subtree. However, you should read the
version which came with the Bugzilla release you are using.
The Bugzilla Guide, or a section of it, is also available in the
following languages: German.
In addition, there are Bugzilla template localisation projects in the
following languages. They may have translated documentation available:
Belarusian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, French, German, Korean,
Russian and Spanish.
If you would like to volunteer to translate the Guide into additional
languages, please contact Dave Miller.
_________________________________________________________________
1.4. Credits
The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the
creation of this Guide, through their writing, dedicated hacking
efforts, numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall
excellent contribution to the Bugzilla community:
Matthew P. Barnson, Kevin Brannen, Dawn Endico, Ben FrantzDale, Eric
Hanson, Tara Hernandez, Dave Lawrence, Zach Lipton, Gervase Markham,
Andrew Pearson, Joe Robins, Spencer Smith, Jacob Steenhagen, Ron
Teitelbaum, Terry Weissman, Martin Wulffeld.
Also, thanks are due to the members of the
netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup. Without your discussions,
insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.
_________________________________________________________________
1.5. Document Conventions
This document uses the following conventions:
Descriptions Appearance
Warning
Caution
Don't run with scissors!
Hint
Tip
Would you like a breath mint?
Note
Note
Dear John...
Information requiring special attention
Warning
Read this or the cat gets it.
File or directory name filename
Command to be typed command
Application name application
Normal user's prompt under bash shell bash$
Root user's prompt under bash shell bash#
Normal user's prompt under tcsh shell tcsh$
Environment variables VARIABLE
Term found in the glossary Bugzilla
Code example
Beginning and end of paragraph
This documentation is maintained in DocBook 4.1.2 XML format. Changes
are best submitted as plain text or XML diffs, attached to a bug filed
in the Bugzilla Documentation component.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 2. Installing Bugzilla
2.1. Installation
Note
If you just want to use Bugzilla, you do not need to install it. None
of this chapter is relevant to you. Ask your Bugzilla administrator
for the URL to access it over the web.
The Bugzilla server software is usually installed on Linux or Solaris.
If you are installing on another OS, check Section 2.4 before you
start your installation to see if there are any special instructions.
As an alternative to following these instructions, you may wish to try
Arne Schirmacher's unofficial and unsupported Bugzilla Installer,
which installs Bugzilla and all its prerequisites on Linux or Solaris
systems.
This guide assumes that you have administrative access to the Bugzilla
machine. It not possible to install and run Bugzilla itself without
administrative access except in the very unlikely event that every
single prerequisite is already installed.
Warning
The installation process may make your machine insecure for short
periods of time. Make sure there is a firewall between you and the
Internet.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
installing Bugzilla (and at regular intervals thereafter :-).
In outline, the installation proceeds as follows:
1. Install Perl (5.6.0 or above)
2. Install MySQL (3.23.41 or above)
3. Install a Webserver
4. Install Bugzilla
5. Install Perl modules
6. Configure all of the above.
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2.1.1. Perl
Installed Version Test: perl -v
Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. If
you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit
http://www.perl.com. Although Bugzilla runs with Perl 5.6.0, it's a
good idea to be using the latest stable version. As of this writing,
that is Perl 5.8.2.
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2.1.2. MySQL
Installed Version Test: mysql -V
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://www.mysql.com. You need MySQL version 3.23.41 or higher.
Note
Many of the binary versions of MySQL store their data files in /var.
On some Unix systems, this is part of a smaller root partition, and
may not have room for your bug database. To change the data directory,
you have to build MySQL from source yourself, and set it as an option
to configure.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation
system (such as .rpm, .dep, .exe, or .msi) make sure the MySQL server
is started when the machine boots.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.3. Web Server
Installed Version Test: view the default welcome page at
http:///
You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is
capable of running CGI scripts will work. However, we strongly
recommend using the Apache web server (either 1.3.x or 2.x), and the
installation instructions usually assume you are using it. If you have
got Bugzilla working using another webserver, please share your
experiences with us by filing a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.
If you don't have Apache and your OS doesn't provide official
packages, visit http://httpd.apache.org/.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.4. Bugzilla
Download a Bugzilla tarball (or check it out from CVS) and place it in
a suitable directory, writable by the default web server user
(probably "nobody"). Good locations are either directly in the main
web space for your web server or perhaps in /usr/local with a symbolic
link from the web space.
Caution
The default Bugzilla distribution is not designed to be placed in a
cgi-bin directory. This includes any directory which is configured
using the ScriptAlias directive of Apache.
Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that
directory writable by your webserver's user. This is a temporary step
until you run the checksetup.pl script, which locks down your
installation.
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2.1.5. Perl Modules
Bugzilla's installation process is based on a script called
checksetup.pl. The first thing it checks is whether you have
appropriate versions of all the required Perl modules. The aim of this
section is to pass this check. When it passes, do not run it again,
but proceed to Section 2.2.
At this point, you need to su to root. You should remain as root until
the end of the install. Then run:
bash# ./checksetup.pl
checksetup.pl will print out a list of the required and optional Perl
modules, together with the versions (if any) installed on your
machine. The list of required modules is reasonably long; however, you
may already have several of them installed.
There is a meta-module called Bundle::Bugzilla, which installs all the
other modules with a single command. You should use this if you are
running Perl 5.6.1 or above.
The preferred way of installing Perl modules is via CPAN on Unix, or
PPM on Windows (see Section 2.4.1.2). These instructions assume you
are using CPAN; if for some reason you need to install the Perl
modules manually, see Appendix C.
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install ""'
If you using Bundle::Bugzilla, invoke the magic CPAN command on it.
Otherwise, you need to work down the list of modules that
checksetup.pl says are required, in the order given, invoking the
command on each.
Tip
Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most
times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in
"@INC". Virtually every time, this error is due to permissions being
set too restrictively for you to compile Perl modules or not having
the necessary Perl development libraries installed on your system.
Consult your local UNIX systems administrator for help solving these
permissions issues; if you are the local UNIX sysadmin, please consult
the newsgroup/mailing list for further assistance or hire someone to
help you out.
Here is a complete list of modules and their minimum versions. Some
modules have special installation notes, which follow.
Required Perl modules:
1. AppConfig (1.52)
2. CGI (2.93)
3. Data::Dumper (any)
4. Date::Format (2.21)
5. DBI (1.32)
6. DBD::mysql (2.1010)
7. File::Spec (0.82)
8. File::Temp (any)
9. Template (2.08)
10. Text::Wrap (2001.0131)
Optional Perl modules:
1. GD (1.20) for bug charting
2. Chart::Base (0.99c) for bug charting
3. GD::Graph (any) for bug charting
4. GD::Text::Align (any) for bug charting
5. XML::Parser (any) for the XML interface
6. PatchReader (0.9.1) for pretty HTML view of patches
7. MIME::Parser (any) for the optional email interface
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.1. DBD::mysql
The installation process will ask you a few questions about the
desired compilation target and your MySQL installation. For most of
the questions the provided default will be adequate, but when asked if
your desired target is the MySQL or mSQL packages, you should select
the MySQL-related ones. Later you will be asked if you wish to provide
backwards compatibility with the older MySQL packages; you should
answer YES to this question. The default is NO.
A host of 'localhost' should be fine. A testing user of 'test', with a
null password, should have sufficient access to run tests on the
'test' database which MySQL creates upon installation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.2. Template Toolkit (2.08)
When you install Template Toolkit, you'll get asked various questions
about features to enable. The defaults are fine, except that it is
recommended you use the high speed XS Stash of the Template Toolkit,
in order to achieve best performance.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.3. GD (1.20)
The GD module is only required if you want graphical reports.
Note
The Perl GD module requires some other libraries that may or may not
be installed on your system, including libpng and libgd. The full
requirements are listed in the Perl GD module README. If compiling GD
fails, it's probably because you're missing a required library.
Tip
The version of the GD module you need is very closely tied to the
libgd version installed on your system. If you have a version 1.x of
libgd the 2.x versions of the GD module won't work for you.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.4. Chart::Base (0.99c)
The Chart::Base module is only required if you want graphical reports.
Note that earlier versions that 0.99c used GIFs, which are no longer
supported by the latest versions of GD.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.5. GD::Graph (any)
The GD::Graph module is only required if you want graphical reports.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.6. GD::Text::Align (any)
The GD::Text::Align module is only required if you want graphical
reports.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.7. XML::Parser (any)
The XML::Parser module is only required if you want to import XML bugs
using the importxml.pl script. This is required to use Bugzilla's
"move bugs" feature; you may also want to use it for migrating from
another bug database. XML::Parser requires that the expat library is
already installed on your machine.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.8. MIME::Parser (any)
The MIME::Parser module is only required if you want to use the email
interface located in the contrib directory.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.9. PatchReader (0.9.1)
The PatchReader module is only required if you want to use Patch
Viewer, a Bugzilla feature to show code patches in your web browser in
a more readable form.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2. Configuration
Warning
Poorly-configured MySQL and Bugzilla installations have given
attackers full access to systems in the past. Please take the security
parts of these guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden
away behind your firewall.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.1. localconfig
Once you run checksetup.pl with all the correct modules installed, it
displays a message about, and write out a file called, localconfig.
This file contains the default settings for a number of Bugzilla
parameters.
Load this file in your editor. The only value you need to change is
$db_pass, the password for the user you will create for your database.
Pick a strong password (for simplicity, it should not contain single
quote characters) and put it here.
The other options in the localconfig file are documented by their
accompanying comments. If you have a slightly non-standard MySQL
setup, you may wish to change one or more of the other "$db_*"
parameters.
You may also wish to change the names of the priorities, severities,
operating systems and platforms for your installation. However, you
can always change these after installation has finished; if you then
re-run checksetup.pl, the changes will get picked up.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2. MySQL
2.2.2.1. Security
MySQL ships as insecure by default. It allows anybody to on the local
machine full administrative capabilities without requiring a password;
the special MySQL root account (note: this is not the same as the
system root) also has no password. Also, many installations default to
running mysqld as the system root.
1. To disable the anonymous user account and set a password for the
root user, execute the following. The root user password should be
different to the bugs user password you set in localconfig in the
previous section, and also different to the password for the
system root account on your machine.
bash$ mysql mysql
mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE user = '';
mysql> UPDATE user SET password = password('new_password') WHERE user = 'root
';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
From this point forward, to run the mysql command-line client, you
will need to type mysql -u root -p and enter new_password when
prompted.
2. If you run MySQL on the same machine as your web server, you
should disable remote access to MySQL by adding the following to
your /etc/my.conf:
[myslqd]
# Prevent network access to MySQL.
skip-networking
3. Consult the documentation that came with your system for
information on making mysqld run as an unprivileged user.
4. For added security, you could also run MySQL, or even all of
Bugzilla in a chroot jail; however, instructions for doing that
are beyond the scope of this document.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.2. Allow large attachments
You need to configure MySQL to accept large packets, if you want to
have attachments larger than 64K. Add the text below to your
/etc/my.conf. There is also a parameter in Bugzilla for setting the
maximum allowable attachment size, (default 1MB). Bugzilla will only
accept attachments up to the lower of these two sizes.
[mysqld]
# Allow packets up to 1M
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=1M
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.3. Add a user to MySQL
You need to add a new MySQL user for Bugzilla to use. (It's not safe
to have Bugzilla use the MySQL root account.) The following
instructions assume the defaults in localconfig; if you changed those,
you need to modify the SQL command appropriately. You will need the
$db_pass password you set in localconfig in Section 2.2.1.
We use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs" user. This also
restricts the "bugs" user to operations within a database called
"bugs", and only allows the account to connect from "localhost".
Modify it to reflect your setup if you will be connecting from another
machine or as a different user.
Run the mysql command-line client and enter:
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,ALTER,CREATE,
DROP,REFERENCES ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY '$db_pass';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES
Note
If you are using MySQL 4, you need to add the LOCK TABLES and CREATE
TEMPORARY TABLES permissions to the list.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.3. checksetup.pl
Next, rerun checksetup.pl. It reconfirms that all the modules are
present, and notices the altered localconfig file, which it assumes
you have edited to your satisfaction. It compiles the UI templates,
connects to the database using the 'bugs' user you created and the
password you defined, and creates the 'bugs' database and the tables
therein.
After that, it asks for details of an administrator account. Bugzilla
can have multiple administrators - you can create more later - but it
needs one to start off with. Enter the email address of an
administrator, his or her full name, and a suitable Bugzilla password.
checksetup.pl will then finish. You may rerun checksetup.pl at any
time if you wish.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4. Web server
Configure your web server according to the instructions in the
appropriate section. The Bugzilla Team recommends Apache.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.1. Apache httpd
Load httpd.conf in your editor.
Uncomment (or add) the following line. This configures Apache to run
.cgi files outside the cgi-bin directory.
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Apache uses directives to permit fine-grained permission
setting. Add the following two lines to a directive that
applies either to the Bugzilla directory or one of its parents (e.g.
the directive). This allows Bugzilla's
.htaccess files to override global permissions, and allows .cgi files
to run in the Bugzilla directory.
Options +ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride Limit
Add index.cgi to the end of the DirectoryIndex line.
checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and
directories if it knows what user the webserver runs as. Look for the
User line in httpd.conf, and place that value in the $webservergroup
variable in localconfig. Then rerun checksetup.pl.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.2. Microsoft Internet Information Services
If you need, or for some reason even want, to use Microsoft's Internet
Information Services or Personal Web Server you should be able to. You
will need to configure them to know how to run CGI scripts. This is
described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q245225 for Internet
Information Services and Q231998 for Personal Web Server.
Also, and this can't be stressed enough, make sure that files such as
localconfig and your data directory are secured as described in
Section 2.2.4.4.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.3. AOL Server
Ben FrantzDale reported success using AOL Server with Bugzilla. He
reported his experience and what appears below is based on that.
AOL Server will have to be configured to run CGI scripts, please
consult the documentation that came with your server for more
information on how to do this.
Because AOL Server doesn't support .htaccess files, you'll have to
create a TCL script. You should create an
aolserver/modules/tcl/filter.tcl file (the filename shouldn't matter)
with the following contents (change /bugzilla/ to the web-based path
to your Bugzilla installation):
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/localconfig filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/localconfig~ filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/\#localconfig\# filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/*.pl filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/syncshadowdb filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/runtests.sh filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/data/* filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/template/* filter_deny
proc filter_deny { why } {
ns_log Notice "filter_deny"
return "filter_return"
}
Warning
This probably doesn't account for all possible editor backup files so
you may wish to add some additional variations of localconfig. For
more information, see bug 186383 or Bugtraq ID 6501.
Note
If you are using webdot from research.att.com (the default
configuration for the webdotbase paramater), you will need to allow
access to data/webdot/*.dot for the reasearch.att.com machine.
If you are using a local installation of GraphViz, you will need to
allow everybody to access *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, and *.map in the
data/webdot directory.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.4. Web Server Access Controls
Users of Apache can skip this section because Bugzilla ships with
.htaccess files which restrict access in the manner required. Users of
other webservers, read on.
There are several files in the Bugzilla directory that should not be
accessible from the web. You need to configure your webserver so they
they aren't. Not doing this may reveal sensitive information such as
database passwords.
* In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:
+ Block: *.pl, *localconfig*, runtests.sh
+ But allow: localconfig.js, localconfig.rdf
* In data:
+ Block everything
+ But allow: duplicates.rdf
* In data/webdot:
+ If you use a remote webdot server:
o Block everything
o But allow *.dot only for the remote webdot server
+ Otherwise, if you use a local GraphViz:
o Block everything
o But allow: *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, *.map
+ And if you don't use any dot:
o Block everything
* In Bugzilla:
+ Block everything
* In template:
+ Block everything
You should test to make sure that the files mentioned above are not
accessible from the Internet, especially your localconfig file which
contains your database password. To test, simply point your web
browser at the file; for example, to test mozilla.org's installation,
we'd try to access http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig. You should
get a 403 Forbidden error.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.5. Bugzilla
Your Bugzilla should now be working. Access
http:/// - you should see the Bugzilla front
page. If not, consult the Troubleshooting section, Section 2.5.
Log in with the administrator account you defined in the last
checksetup.pl run. You should go through the parameters on the Edit
Parameters page (see link in the footer) and see if there are any you
wish to change. They key parameters are documented in Section 3.1; you
should certainly alter maintainer and urlbase; you may also want to
alter cookiepath or requirelogin.
This would also be a good time to revisit the localconfig file and
make sure that the names of the priorities, severities, platforms and
operating systems are those you wish to use when you start creating
bugs. Remember to rerun checksetup.pl if you change it.
Bugzilla has several optional features which require extra
configuration. You can read about those in Section 2.3.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
Bugzilla has a number of optional features. This section describes how
to configure or enable them.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.1. Bug Graphs
If you have installed the necessary Perl modules you can start
collecting statistics for the nifty Bugzilla graphs.
bash# crontab -e
This should bring up the crontab file in your editor. Add a cron entry
like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:
5 0 * * * cd ; ./collectstats.pl
After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the
Reports page.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.2. Dependency Charts
As well as the text-based dependency trees, Bugzilla also supports a
graphical view of dependency relationships, using a package called
'dot'. Exactly how this works is controlled by the 'webdotbase'
parameter, which can have one of three values:
1. A complete file path to the command 'dot' (part of GraphViz) will
generate the graphs locally
2. A URL prefix pointing to an installation of the webdot package
will generate the graphs remotely
3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.
The easiest way to get this working is to install GraphViz. If you do
that, you need to enable server-side image maps in Apache.
Alternatively, you could set up a webdot server, or use the AT&T
public webdot server. This is the default for the webdotbase param,
but it's often overloaded and slow. Note that AT&T's server won't work
if Bugzilla is only accessible using HARTS. Editor's note: What the
heck is HARTS? Google doesn't know...
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.3. The Whining Cron
What good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make them more so
you can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at
engineers which leave their bugs in the NEW or REOPENED state without
triaging them.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab
entry, in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This
example runs it at 12.55am.
55 0 * * * cd ; ./whineatnews.pl
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.4. Patch Viewer
Patch Viewer is the engine behind Bugzilla's graphical display of code
patches. You can integrate this with copies of the cvs, lxr and bonsai
tools if you have them, by giving the locations of your installation
of these tools in editparams.cgi.
Patch Viewer also optionally will use the cvs, diff and interdiff
command-line utilities if they exist on the system. Interdiff can be
obtained from http://cyberelk.net/tim/patchutils/. If these programs
are not in the system path, you can configure their locations in
localconfig.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.5. LDAP Authentication
LDAP authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication
architecture.
The existing authentication scheme for Bugzilla uses email addresses
as the primary user ID, and a password to authenticate that user. All
places within Bugzilla where you need to deal with user ID (e.g
assigning a bug) use the email address. The LDAP authentication builds
on top of this scheme, rather than replacing it. The initial log in is
done with a username and password for the LDAP directory. This then
fetches the email address from LDAP and authenticates seamlessly in
the standard Bugzilla authentication scheme using this email address.
If an account for this address already exists in your Bugzilla system,
it will log in to that account. If no account for that email address
exists, one is created at the time of login. (In this case, Bugzilla
will attempt to use the "displayName" or "cn" attribute to determine
the user's full name.) After authentication, all other user-related
tasks are still handled by email address, not LDAP username. You still
assign bugs by email address, query on users by email address, etc.
Caution
Because the Bugzilla account is not created until the first time a
user logs in, a user who has not yet logged is unknown to Bugzilla.
This means they cannot be used as an assignee or QA contact (default
or otherwise), added to any cc list, or any other such operation. One
possible workaround is the bugzilla_ldapsync.rb script in the contrib
directory. Another possible solution is fixing bug 201069.
Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:
loginmethod
This parameter should be set to "LDAP" only if you will be
using an LDAP directory for authentication. If you set this
param to "LDAP" but fail to set up the other parameters listed
below you will not be able to log back in to Bugzilla one you
log out. If this happens to you, you will need to manually edit
data/params and set loginmethod to "DB".
LDAPserver
This parameter should be set to the name (and optionally the
port) of your LDAP server. If no port is specified, it assumes
the default LDAP port of 389.
Ex. "ldap.company.com" or "ldap.company.com:3268"
LDAPbinddn [Optional]
Some LDAP servers will not allow an anonymous bind to search
the directory. If this is the case with your configuration you
should set the LDAPbinddn parameter to the user account
Bugzilla should use instead of the anonymous bind.
Ex. "cn=default,cn=user:password"
LDAPBaseDN
The LDAPBaseDN parameter should be set to the location in your
LDAP tree that you would like to search for email addresses.
Your uids should be unique under the DN specified here.
Ex. "ou=People,o=Company"
LDAPuidattribute
The LDAPuidattribute parameter should be set to the attribute
which contains the unique UID of your users. The value
retrieved from this attribute will be used when attempting to
bind as the user to confirm their password.
Ex. "uid"
LDAPmailattribute
The LDAPmailattribute parameter should be the name of the
attribute which contains the email address your users will
enter into the Bugzilla login boxes.
Ex. "mail"
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.6. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript
It is possible for a Bugzilla user to take advantage of character set
encoding ambiguities to inject HTML into Bugzilla comments. This could
include malicious scripts. Due to internationalization concerns, we
are unable to incorporate by default the code changes suggested by the
CERT advisory on this issue. If your installation is for an English
speaking audience only, making the change below will prevent this
problem.
Simply locate the following line in Bugzilla/CGI.pm:
$self->charset('');
and change it to:
$self->charset('ISO-8859-1');
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.7. mod_throttle
It is possible for a user, by mistake or on purpose, to access the
database many times in a row which can result in very slow access
speeds for other users. If your Bugzilla installation is experiencing
this problem, you may install the Apache module mod_throttle which can
limit connections by IP address. You may download this module at
http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/. Follow the instructions
to install into your Apache install. This module only functions with
the Apache web server! The command you need is ThrottleClientIP. See
the documentation for more information.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.8. TCP/IP Ports
A single-box Bugzilla only requires port 80, plus port 25 if you are
using the optional email interface. You should firewall all other
ports and/or disable services listening on them.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.9. Daemon Accounts
Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd and MySQL's mysqld default to
running as either "root" or "nobody". Running as "root" introduces
obvious security problems, but the problems introduced by running
everything as "nobody" may not be so obvious. Basically, if you're
running every daemon as "nobody" and one of them gets compromised,
they all get compromised. For this reason it is recommended that you
create a user account for each daemon.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4. OS-Specific Installation Notes
Many aspects of the Bugzilla installation can be affected by the the
operating system you choose to install it on. Sometimes it can be made
easier and others more difficult. This section will attempt to help
you understand both the difficulties of running on specific operating
systems and the utilities available to make it easier.
If you have anything to add or notes for an operating system not
covered, please file a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1. Microsoft Windows
Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes. The
Bugzilla Team is working to make it easier, but that goal is not
considered a top priority. If you wish to run Bugzilla, we still
recommend doing so on a Unix based system such as GNU/Linux. As of
this writing, all members of the Bugzilla team and all known large
installations run on Unix based systems.
If after hearing all that, you have enough pain tolerance to attempt
installing Bugzilla on Win32, here are some pointers. Because this is
a development version of the guide, these instructions are subject to
change without notice. In fact, the Bugzilla Team hopes to have
Bugzilla reasonably close to "out of the box" compatibility with
Windows by the 2.18 release.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.1. Win32 Perl
Perl for Windows can be obtained from ActiveState. You should be able
to find a compiled binary at
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32
Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in Section
2.1.5. The main difference is that windows uses PPM instead of CPAN.
C:\perl> ppm
Note
The above syntax should work for all modules with the exception of
Template Toolkit. The Template Toolkit website suggests using the
instructions on OpenInteract's website.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.3. Code changes required to run on win32
As Bugzilla still doesn't run "out of the box" on Windows, code has to
be modified. This section lists the required changes.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.3.1. Changes to checksetup.pl
In checksetup.pl, the line reading:
my $mysql_binaries = `which mysql`;
to
my $mysql_binaries = "D:\\mysql\\bin\\mysql";
And you'll also need to change:
my $webservergid = getgrnam($my_webservergroup)
to
my $webservergid = '8'
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.3.2. Changes to BugMail.pm
To make bug email work on Win32 (until bug 84876 lands), the simplest
way is to have the Net::SMTP Perl module installed and change this:
open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail $sendmailparam -t -i") ||
die "Can't open sendmail";
print SENDMAIL trim($msg) . "\n";
close SENDMAIL;
to
use Net::SMTP;
my $smtp_server = 'smtp.mycompany.com'; # change this
# Use die on error, so that the mail will be in the 'unsent mails' and
# can be sent from the sanity check page.
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($smtp_server) ||
die 'Cannot connect to server \'$smtp_server\'';
$smtp->mail('bugzilla-daemon@mycompany.com'); # change this
$smtp->to($person);
$smtp->data();
$smtp->datasend($msg);
$smtp->dataend();
$smtp->quit;
Don't forget to change the name of your SMTP server and the domain of
the sending email address (after the '@') in the above lines of code.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.4. Serving the web pages
As is the case on Unix based systems, any web server should be able to
handle Bugzilla; however, the Bugzilla Team still recommends Apache
whenever asked. No matter what web server you choose, be sure to pay
attention to the security notes in Section 2.2.4.4. More information
on configuring specific web servers can be found in Section 2.2.4.
Note
If using Apache on windows, you can set the ScriptInterpreterSource
directive in your Apache config to avoid having to modify the first
line of every script to contain your path to perl instead of
/usr/bin/perl.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.2. Mac OS X
Apple did not include the GD library with Mac OS X. Bugzilla needs
this for bug graphs.
You can install it using a program called Fink, which is similar in
nature to the CPAN installer, but installs common GNU utilities. Fink
is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/.
Follow the instructions for setting up Fink. Once it's installed,
you'll want to use it to install the gd2 package.
It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit
enter to install all of the dependencies and then watch it work. You
will then be able to use CPAN to install the GD Perl module.
Note
To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by
default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs
most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and
headers be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and
/usr/local/include. When the Perl module config script asks where your
libgd is, be sure to tell it /sw/lib.
Also available via Fink is expat. After using fink to install the
expat package you will be able to install XML::Parser using CPAN.
There is one caveat. Unlike recent versions of the GD module,
XML::Parser doesn't prompt for the location of the required libraries.
When using CPAN, you will need to use the following command sequence:
# perl -MCPAN -e'look XML::Parser' (1)
# perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include
# make; make test; make install (2)
# exit (3)
(1) (3)
The look command will download the module and spawn a new shell
with the extracted files as the current working directory. The
exit command will return you to your original shell.
(2)
You should watch the output from these make commands,
especially "make test" as errors may prevent XML::Parser from
functioning correctly with Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.3. Linux-Mandrake 8.0
Linux-Mandrake 8.0 includes every required and optional library for
Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is by using the urpmi
utility. If you follow these commands, you should have everything you
need for Bugzilla, and ./checksetup.pl should not complain about any
missing libraries. You may already have some of these installed.
bash# urpmi perl-mysql
bash# urpmi perl-chart
bash# urpmi perl-gd
bash# urpmi perl-MailTools (1)
bash# urpmi apache-modules
(1)
for Bugzilla email integration
_________________________________________________________________
2.5. Troubleshooting
This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems.
If none of the section headings seems to match your problem, read the
general advice.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.1. General Advice
If you can't get checksetup.pl to run to completion, it normally
explains what's wrong and how to fix it. If you can't work it out, or
if it's being uncommunicative, post the errors in the
netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup.
If you have made it all the way through Section 2.1 (Installation) and
Section 2.2 (Configuration) but accessing the Bugzilla URL doesn't
work, the first thing to do is to check your webserver error log. For
Apache, this is often located at /etc/logs/httpd/error_log. The error
messages you see may be self-explanatory enough to enable you to
diagnose and fix the problem. If not, see below for some
commonly-encountered errors. If that doesn't help, post the errors to
the newsgroup.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.2. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not
installed!
You have two versions of Perl on your machine. You are installing
modules into one, and Bugzilla is using the other. Rerun the CPAN
commands (or manual compile) using the full path to Perl from the top
of checksetup.pl. This will make sure you are installing the modules
in the right place.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.3. Bundle::Bugzilla makes me upgrade to Perl 5.6.1
Try executing perl -MCPAN -e 'install CPAN' and then continuing.
Certain older versions of the CPAN toolset were somewhat naive about
how to upgrade Perl modules. When a couple of modules got rolled into
the core Perl distribution for 5.6.1, CPAN thought that the best way
to get those modules up to date was to haul down the Perl distribution
itself and build it. Needless to say, this has caused headaches for
just about everybody. Upgrading to a newer version of CPAN with the
commandline above should fix things.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.4. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql
(over which the Bugzilla team have no control):
DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site
/lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)
To fix this, go to /lib/DBD/sponge.pm in your Perl
installation and replace
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};
by
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};
(note the S added to NAME.)
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.5. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other
distributions with "paranoid" security options, it is possible that
the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error:
cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied
This is because your /var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of
"drwx------". Type chmod 755 /var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this
problem.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.6. Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT
This is caused by a bug in the version of File::Temp that is
distributed with perl 5.6.0. Many minor variations of this error have
been reported:
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 208.
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_EXLOCK, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 210.
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_TEMPORARY, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 233.
Numerous people have reported that upgrading to version 5.6.1 or
higher solved the problem for them. A less involved fix is to apply
the following patch, which is also available as a patch file.
--- File/Temp.pm.orig Thu Feb 6 16:26:00 2003
+++ File/Temp.pm Thu Feb 6 16:26:23 2003
@@ -205,6 +205,7 @@
# eg CGI::Carp
local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+ local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
$bit = &$func();
1;
};
@@ -226,6 +227,7 @@
# eg CGI::Carp
local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+ local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
$bit = &$func();
1;
};
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3. Administering Bugzilla
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from
the "Edit parameters" link in the page footer. Here are some of the
key parameters on that page. You should run down this list and set
them appropriately after installing Bugzilla.
1. maintainer: The maintainer parameter is the email address of the
person responsible for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The
address need not be that of a valid Bugzilla account.
2. urlbase: This parameter defines the fully qualified domain name
and web server path to your Bugzilla installation.
For example, if your Bugzilla query page is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your "urlbase" to
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.
3. makeproductgroups: This dictates whether or not to automatically
create groups when new products are created.
4. useentrygroupdefault: Bugzilla products can have a group
associated with them, so that certain users can only see bugs in
certain products. When this parameter is set to "on", this causes
the initial group controls on newly created products to place all
newly-created bugs in the group having the same name as the
product immediately. After a product is initially created, the
group controls can be further adjusted without interference by
this mechanism.
5. shadowdb: You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla
reaches a high level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only
table-level write locking. What this means is that if someone
needs to make a change to a bug, they will lock the entire table
until the operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks
reads until the write is complete. Note that more recent versions
of mysql support row level locking using different table types.
These types are slower than the standard type, and Bugzilla does
not yet take advantage of features such as transactions which
would justify this speed decrease. The Bugzilla team are, however,
happy to hear about any experiences with row level locking and
Bugzilla.
The "shadowdb" parameter was designed to get around this
limitation. While only a single user is allowed to write to a
table at a time, reads can continue unimpeded on a read-only
shadow copy of the database. Although your database size will
double, a shadow database can cause an enormous performance
improvement when implemented on extremely high-traffic Bugzilla
databases.
As a guide, on reasonably old hardware, mozilla.org began needing
"shadowdb" when they reached around 40,000 Bugzilla users with
several hundred Bugzilla bug changes and comments per day.
The value of the parameter defines the name of the shadow bug
database. You will need to set the host and port settings from the
params page, and set up replication in your database server so
that updates reach this readonly mirror. Consult your database
documentation for more detail.
6. shutdownhtml: If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform
administration, enter some descriptive HTML here and anyone who
tries to use Bugzilla will receive a page to that effect.
Obviously, editparams.cgi will still be accessible so you can
remove the HTML and re-enable Bugzilla. :-)
7. passwordmail: Every time a user creates an account, the text of
this parameter (with substitutions) is sent to the new user along
with their password message.
Add any text you wish to the "passwordmail" parameter box. For
instance, many people choose to use this box to give a quick
training blurb about how to use Bugzilla at your site.
8. movebugs: This option is an undocumented feature to allow moving
bugs between separate Bugzilla installations. You will need to
understand the source code in order to use this feature. Please
consult movebugs.pl in your Bugzilla source tree for further
documentation, such as it is.
9. useqacontact: This allows you to define an email address for each
component, in addition to that of the default owner, who will be
sent carbon copies of incoming bugs.
10. usestatuswhiteboard: This defines whether you wish to have a
free-form, overwritable field associated with each bug. The
advantage of the Status Whiteboard is that it can be deleted or
modified with ease, and provides an easily-searchable field for
indexing some bugs that have some trait in common.
11. whinedays: Set this to the number of days you want to let bugs go
in the NEW or REOPENED state before notifying people they have
untouched new bugs. If you do not plan to use this feature, simply
do not set up the whining cron job described in the installation
instructions, or set this value to "0" (never whine).
12. commenton*: All these fields allow you to dictate what changes can
pass without comment, and which must have a comment from the
person who changed them. Often, administrators will allow users to
add themselves to the CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status
Whiteboard without adding a comment as to their reasons for the
change, yet require that most other changes come with an
explanation.
Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a
wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or
reopen bugs at the very least.
Note
It is generally far better to require a developer comment when
resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database
users than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment
as to what the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!)
13. supportwatchers: Turning on this option allows users to ask to
receive copies of all a particular other user's bug email. This
is, of course, subject to the groupset restrictions on the bug; if
the "watcher" would not normally be allowed to view a bug, the
watcher cannot get around the system by setting herself up to
watch the bugs of someone with bugs outside her privileges. They
would still only receive email updates for those bugs she could
normally view.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2. User Administration
3.2.1. Creating the Default User
When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will
prompt you for the administrative username (email address) and
password for this "super user". If for some reason you delete the
"super user" account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you
for this username and password.
Tip
If you wish to add more administrative users, add them to the "admin"
group and, optionally, add edit the tweakparams, editusers,
creategroups, editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the
entire admin group to those groups.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2. Managing Other Users
3.2.2.1. Creating new users
Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New
Account" link at the bottom of each page (assuming they aren't logged
in as someone else already.) However, should you desire to create user
accounts ahead of time, here is how you do it.
1. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the
query page, and then click "Add a new user".
2. Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When
done, click "Submit".
Note
Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their
username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts
(watchers which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email
addresses which are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to
log out and use the "New Account" button to create users, as it will
pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her
account name and password.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2.2. Modifying Users
To see a specific user, search for their login name in the box
provided on the "Edit Users" page. To see all users, leave the box
blank.
You can search in different ways the listbox to the right of the text
entry box. You can match by case-insensitive substring (the default),
regular expression, or a reverse regular expression match, which finds
every user name which does NOT match the regular expression. (Please
see the man regexp manual page for details on regular expression
syntax.)
Once you have found your user, you can change the following fields:
* Login Name: This is generally the user's full email address.
However, if you have are using the emailsuffix Param, this may
just be the user's login name. Note that users can now change
their login names themselves (to any valid email address.)
* Real Name: The user's real name. Note that Bugzilla does not
require this to create an account.
* Password: You can change the user's password here. Users can
automatically request a new password, so you shouldn't need to do
this often. If you want to disable an account, see Disable Text
below.
* Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a
space, the user is prevented from logging in, or making any
changes to bugs via the web interface. The HTML you type in this
box is presented to the user when they attempt to perform these
actions, and should explain why the account was disabled.
Warning
Don't disable all the administrator accounts!
Note
The user can still submit bugs via the e-mail gateway, if you set it
up, even if the disabled text field is filled in. The e-mail gateway
should not be enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla.
* : If you have created some groups, e.g.
"securitysensitive", then checkboxes will appear here to allow you
to add users to, or remove them from, these groups.
* canconfirm: This field is only used if you have enabled the
"unconfirmed" status. If you enable this for a user, that user can
then move bugs from "Unconfirmed" to a "Confirmed" status (e.g.:
"New" status).
* creategroups: This option will allow a user to create and destroy
groups in Bugzilla.
* editbugs: Unless a user has this bit set, they can only edit those
bugs for which they are the assignee or the reporter. Even if this
option is unchecked, users can still add comments to bugs.
* editcomponents: This flag allows a user to create new products and
components, as well as modify and destroy those that have no bugs
associated with them. If a product or component has bugs
associated with it, those bugs must be moved to a different
product or component before Bugzilla will allow them to be
destroyed.
* editkeywords: If you use Bugzilla's keyword functionality,
enabling this feature allows a user to create and destroy
keywords. As always, the keywords for existing bugs containing the
keyword the user wishes to destroy must be changed before Bugzilla
will allow it to die.
* editusers: This flag allows a user to do what you're doing right
now: edit other users. This will allow those with the right to do
so to remove administrator privileges from other users or grant
them to themselves. Enable with care.
* tweakparams: This flag allows a user to change Bugzilla's Params
(using editparams.cgi.)
* : This allows an administrator to specify the
products in which a user can see bugs. The user must still have
the "editbugs" privilege to edit bugs in these products.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3. Products
Products are the broadest category in Bugzilla, and tend to represent
real-world shipping products. E.g. if your company makes computer
games, you should have one product per game, perhaps a "Common"
product for units of technology used in multiple games, and maybe a
few special products (Website, Administration...)
Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis.
The number of "votes" available to users is set per-product, as is the
number of votes required to move a bug automatically from the
UNCONFIRMED status to the NEW status.
To create a new product:
1. Select "products" from the footer
2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right
3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description
field may contain HTML.
Don't worry about the "Closed for bug entry", "Maximum Votes per
person", "Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug", "Number of
votes a bug in this Product needs to automatically get out of the
UNCOMFIRMED state", and "Version" options yet. We'll cover those in a
few moments.
_________________________________________________________________
3.4. Components
Components are subsections of a Product. E.g. the computer game you
are designing may have a "UI" component, an "API" component, a "Sound
System" component, and a "Plugins" component, each overseen by a
different programmer. It often makes sense to divide Components in
Bugzilla according to the natural divisions of responsibility within
your Product or company.
Each component has a owner and (if you turned it on in the
parameters), a QA Contact. The owner should be the primary person who
fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the person who
will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Owner, QA Contact,
and Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in this
Component and when these bugs change. Default Owner and Default QA
Contact fields only dictate the default assignments; these can be
changed on bug submission, or at any later point in a bug's life.
To create a new Component:
1. Select the "Edit components" link from the "Edit product" page
2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right.
3. Fill out the "Component" field, a short "Description", the
"Initial Owner" and "Initial QA Contact" (if enabled.) The
Component and Description fields may contain HTML; the "Initial
Owner" field must be a login name already existing in the
database.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5. Versions
Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1",
"Flinders 95", and "Flinders 2000". Version is not a multi-select
field; the usual practice is to select the earliest version known to
have the bug.
To create and edit Versions:
1. From the "Edit product" screen, select "Edit Versions"
2. You will notice that the product already has the default version
"undefined". Click the "Add" link in the bottom right.
3. Enter the name of the Version. This field takes text only. Then
click the "Add" button.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6. Milestones
Milestones are "targets" that you plan to get a bug fixed by. For
example, you have a bug that you plan to fix for your 3.0 release, it
would be assigned the milestone of 3.0.
Note
Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned on the
"usetargetmilestone" Param in the "Edit Parameters" screen.
To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone
URL:
1. Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page.
2. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner. text
3. Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can
optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative
number (-255 to 255) that defines where in the list this
particular milestone appears. This is because milestones often do
not occur in alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be
after "Release 1.2". Select "Add".
4. From the Edit product screen, you can enter the URL of a page
which gives information about your milestones and what they mean.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7. Voting
Voting allows users to be given a pot of votes which they can allocate
to bugs, to indicate that they'd like them fixed. This allows
developers to gauge user need for a particular enhancement or bugfix.
By allowing bugs with a certain number of votes to automatically move
from "UNCONFIRMED" to "NEW", users of the bug system can help
high-priority bugs garner attention so they don't sit for a long time
awaiting triage.
To modify Voting settings:
1. Navigate to the "Edit product" screen for the Product you wish to
modify
2. Maximum Votes per person: Setting this field to "0" disables
voting.
3. Maximum Votes a person can put on a single bug: It should probably
be some number lower than the "Maximum votes per person". Don't
set this field to "0" if "Maximum votes per person" is non-zero;
that doesn't make any sense.
4. Number of votes a bug in this product needs to automatically get
out of the UNCONFIRMED state: Setting this field to "0" disables
the automatic move of bugs from UNCONFIRMED to NEW.
5. Once you have adjusted the values to your preference, click
"Update".
_________________________________________________________________
3.8. Groups and Group Security
Groups allow the administrator to isolate bugs or products that should
only be seen by certain people. The association between products and
groups is controlled from the product edit page under "Edit Group
Controls."
If the makeproductgroups param is on, a new group will be
automatically created for every new product.
On the product edit page, there is a page to edit the "Group Controls"
for a product and determine which groups are applicable, default, and
mandatory for each product as well as controlling entry for each
product and being able to set bugs in a product to be totally
read-only unless some group restrictions are met.
For each group, it is possible to specify if membership in that group
is...
1. required for bug entry,
2. Not applicable to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a
member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a
default restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in
this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on
bugs in this product(Mandatory).
3. Not applicable by non-members to this product(NA), a possible
restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in
this product(Shown), a default restriction for a non-member of the
group to place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory
restriction to be placed on bugs in this product when entered by a
non-member(Mandatory).
4. required in order to make any change to bugs in this product
including comments.
To create Groups:
1. Select the "groups" link in the footer.
2. Take a moment to understand the instructions on the "Edit Groups"
screen, then select the "Add Group" link.
3. Fill out the "Group", "Description", and "User RegExp" fields.
"User RegExp" allows you to automatically place all users who
fulfill the Regular Expression into the new group. When you have
finished, click "Add".
Warning
If specifying a domain in the regexp, make sure you end the regexp
with a $. Otherwise, when granting access to "@mycompany\.com", you
will allow access to 'badperson@mycompany.com.cracker.net'. You need
to use '@mycompany\.com$' as the regexp.
4. After you add your new group, edit the new group. On the edit
page, you can specify other groups that should be included in this
group and which groups should be permitted to add and delete users
from this group.
Note that group permissions are such that you need to be a member of
all the groups a bug is in, for whatever reason, to see that bug.
Similarly, you must be a member of all of the entry groups for a
product to add bugs to a product and you must be a member of all of
the canedit groups for a product in order to make any change to bugs
in that product.
_________________________________________________________________
3.9. Upgrading to New Releases
Warning
Upgrading is a one-way process. You should backup your database and
current Bugzilla directory before attempting the upgrade. If you wish
to revert to the old Bugzilla version for any reason, you will have to
restore from these backups.
Upgrading Bugzilla is something we all want to do from time to time,
be it to get new features or pick up the latest security fix. How easy
it is to update depends on a few factors.
* If the new version is a revision or a new point release
* How many, if any, local changes have been made
There are also three different methods to upgrade your installation.
1. Using CVS (Example 3-1)
2. Downloading a new tarball (Example 3-2)
3. Applying the relevant patches (Example 3-3)
Which options are available to you may depend on how large a jump you
are making and/or your network configuration.
Revisions are normally released to fix security vulnerabilities and
are distinguished by an increase in the third number. For example,
when 2.16.2 was released, it was a revision to 2.16.1.
Point releases are normally released when the Bugzilla team feels that
there has been a significant amount of progress made between the last
point release and the current time. These are often proceeded by a
stabilization period and release candidates, however the use of
development versions or release candidates is beyond the scope of this
document. Point releases can be distinguished by an increase in the
second number, or minor version. For example, 2.16.2 is a newer point
release than 2.14.5.
The examples in this section are written as if you were updating to
version 2.16.2. The procedures are the same regardless if you are
updating to a new point release or a new revision. However, the chance
of running into trouble increases when upgrading to a new point
release, escpecially if you've made local changes.
These examples also assume that your Bugzilla installation is at
/var/www/html/bugzilla. If that is not the case, simply substitute the
proper paths where appropriate.
Example 3-1. Upgrading using CVS
Every release of Bugzilla, whether it is a revision or a point
release, is tagged in CVS. Also, every tarball we have distributed
since version 2.12 has been primed for using CVS. This does, however,
require that you are able to access cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port
2401.
Tip
If you can do this, updating using CVS is probably the most painless
method, especially if you have a lot of local changes.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ cvs login
Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401/cvsroot
CVS password: anonymous
bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_16_2 -dP
P checksetup.pl
P collectstats.pl
P globals.pl
P docs/rel_notes.txt
P template/en/default/list/quips.html.tmpl
Caution
If a line in the output from cvs update begins with a C that
represents a file with local changes that CVS was unable to properly
merge. You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla
(or at least the portion using that file) will be usable.
Note
You also need to run ./checksetup.pl before your Bugzilla upgrade will
be complete.
Example 3-2. Upgrading using the tarball
If you are unable or unwilling to use CVS, another option that's
always available is to download the latest tarball. This is the most
difficult option to use, especially if you have local changes.
bash$ cd /var/www/html
bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/webtools/bugzilla-2.16.2.tar.gz
Output omitted
bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.16.2.tar.gz
bugzilla-2.16.2/
bugzilla-2.16.2/.cvsignore
bugzilla-2.16.2/1x1.gif
Output truncated
bash$ cd bugzilla-2.16.2
bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* .
bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data .
bash$ cd ..
bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old
bash$ mv bugzilla-2.16.2 bugzilla
bash$ cd bugzilla
bash$ ./checksetup.pl
Output omitted
Warning
The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important
detail, it tells the shell that the destination directory is the
current working directory. Also, the period at the beginning of the
./checksetup.pl is important and can not be omitted.
Note
You will now have to reapply any changes you have made to your local
installation manually.
Example 3-3. Upgrading using patches
The Bugzilla team will normally make a patch file available for
revisions to go from the most recent revision to the new one. You
could also read the release notes and grab the patches attached to the
mentioned bug, but it is safer to use the released patch file as
sometimes patches get changed before they get checked in. It is also
theoretically possible to scour the fixed bug list and pick and choose
which patches to apply from a point release, but this is not
recommended either as what you'll end up with is a hodge podge
Bugzilla that isn't really any version. This would also make it more
difficult to upgrade in the future.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/webtools/bugzilla-2.16.1-to-2.16.2.diff.gz
Output omitted
bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.16.1-to-2.16.2.diff.gz
bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.16.1-to-2.16.2.diff
patching file checksetup.pl
patching file collectstats.pl
patching file globals.pl
Caution
If you do this, beware that this doesn't change the entires in your
CVS directory so it may make updates using CVS (Example 3-1) more
difficult in the future.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 4. Customising Bugzilla
4.1. Template Customization
Administrators can configure the look and feel of Bugzilla without
having to edit Perl files or face the nightmare of massive merge
conflicts when they upgrade to a newer version in the future.
Templatization also makes localized versions of Bugzilla possible, for
the first time. It's possible to have Bugzilla's UI language
determined by the user's browser. More information is available in
Section 4.1.5.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.1. What to Edit
The template directory structure is that there's a top level
directory, template, which contains a directory for each installed
localization. The default English templates are therefore in en.
Underneath that, there is the default directory and optionally the
custom directory. The default directory contains all the templates
shipped with Bugzilla, whereas the custom directory does not exist at
first and must be created if you want to use it.
There are two different ways of editing Bugzilla's templates, and
which you use depends mainly on the method you plan to use to upgrade
Bugzilla. The first method of making customizations is to directly
edit the templates in template/en/default. This is probably the best
method for small changes if you are going to use the CVS method of
upgrading, because if you then execute a cvs update, any template
fixes will get automagically merged into your modified versions.
If you use this method, your installation will break if CVS conflicts
occur.
The other method is to copy the templates to be modified into a
mirrored directory structure under template/en/custom. The templates
in this directory automatically override those in default. This is the
technique you need to use if you use the overwriting method of
upgrade, because otherwise your changes will be lost. This method is
also better if you are using the CVS method of upgrading and are going
to make major changes, because it is guaranteed that the contents of
this directory will not be touched during an upgrade, and you can then
decide whether to continue using your own templates, or make the
effort to merge your changes into the new versions by hand.
If you use this method, your installation may break if incompatible
changes are made to the template interface. If such changes are made
they will be documented in the release notes, provided you are using a
stable release of Bugzilla. If you use using unstable code, you will
need to deal with this one yourself, although if possible the changes
will be mentioned before they occur in the deprecations section of the
previous stable release's release notes.
Note
Don't directly edit the compiled templates in data/template/* - your
changes will be lost when Template Toolkit recompiles them.
Note
It is recommended that you run ./checksetup.pl after any template
edits, especially if you've created a new file in the custom
directory.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.2. How To Edit Templates
Note
If you are making template changes that you intend on submitting back
for inclusion in standard Bugzilla, you should read the relevant
sections of the Developers' Guide.
The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of
this guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current
templates; or, you can read the manual, available on the Template
Toolkit home page.
One thing you should take particular care about is the need to
properly HTML filter data that has been passed into the template. This
means that if the data can possibly contain special HTML characters
such as <, and the data was not intended to be HTML, they need to be
converted to entity form, ie <. You use the 'html' filter in the
Template Toolkit to do this. If you forget, you may open up your
installation to cross-site scripting attacks.
Also note that Bugzilla adds a few filters of its own, that are not in
standard Template Toolkit. In particular, the 'url_quote' filter can
convert characters that are illegal or have special meaning in URLs,
such as &, to the encoded form, ie %26. This actually encodes most
characters (but not the common ones such as letters and numbers and so
on), including the HTML-special characters, so there's never a need to
HTML filter afterwards.
Editing templates is a good way of doing a "poor man's custom fields".
For example, if you don't use the Status Whiteboard, but want to have
a free-form text entry box for "Build Identifier", then you can just
edit the templates to change the field labels. It's still be called
status_whiteboard internally, but your users don't need to know that.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.3. Template Formats
Some CGIs have the ability to use more than one template. For example,
buglist.cgi can output bug lists as RDF or two different forms of HTML
(complex and simple). (Try this out by appending &format=simple to a
buglist.cgi URL on your Bugzilla installation.) This mechanism, called
template 'formats', is extensible.
To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats, grep the CGI for
"GetFormat". If it's not present, adding multiple format support isn't
too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs, e.g. config.cgi.
To make a new format template for a CGI which supports this, open a
current template for that CGI and take note of the INTERFACE comment
(if present.) This comment defines what variables are passed into this
template. If there isn't one, I'm afraid you'll have to read the
template and the code to find out what information you get.
Write your template in whatever markup or text style is appropriate.
You now need to decide what content type you want your template served
as. Open up the localconfig file and find the $contenttypes variable.
If your content type is not there, add it. Remember the three- or
four-letter tag assigned to you content type. This tag will be part of
the template filename.
Save the template as -..tmpl.
Try out the template by calling the CGI as
.cgi?format= .
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.4. Particular Templates
There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in
customizing for your installation.
index.html.tmpl: This is the Bugzilla front page.
global/header.html.tmpl: This defines the header that goes on all
Bugzilla pages. The header includes the banner, which is what appears
to users and is probably what you want to edit instead. However the
header also includes the HTML HEAD section, so you could for example
add a stylesheet or META tag by editing the header.
global/banner.html.tmpl: This contains the "banner", the part of the
header that appears at the top of all Bugzilla pages. The default
banner is reasonably barren, so you'll probably want to customize this
to give your installation a distinctive look and feel. It is
recommended you preserve the Bugzilla version number in some form so
the version you are running can be determined, and users know what
docs to read.
global/footer.html.tmpl: This defines the footer that goes on all
Bugzilla pages. Editing this is another way to quickly get a
distinctive look and feel for your Bugzilla installation.
bug/create/user-message.html.tmpl: This is a message that appears near
the top of the bug reporting page. By modifying this, you can tell
your users how they should report bugs.
bug/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may
wish to get bug submitters to give certain bits of structured
information, each in a separate input widget, for which there is not a
field in the database. The bug entry system has been designed in an
extensible fashion to enable you to define arbitrary fields and
widgets, and have their values appear formatted in the initial
Description, rather than in database fields. An example of this is the
mozilla.org guided bug submission form.
To make this work, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi (the
default template, on which you could base it, is create.html.tmpl),
and either call it create.html.tmpl or use a format and call it
create-.html.tmpl. Put it in the custom/bug/create
directory. In it, add widgets for each piece of information you'd like
collected - such as a build number, or set of steps to reproduce.
Then, create a template like custom/bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl, also
named after your format if you are using one, which references the
form fields you have created. When a bug report is submitted, the
initial comment attached to the bug report will be formatted according
to the layout of this template.
For example, if your enter_bug template had a field
and then your comment.txt.tmpl had
BuildID: [% form.buildid %]
then
BuildID: 20020303
would appear in the initial checkin comment.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language
Bugzilla honours the user's Accept: HTTP header. You can install
templates in other languages, and Bugzilla will pick the most
appropriate according to a priority order defined by you. Many
language templates can be obtained from
http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Instructions for
submitting new languages are also available from that location.
After untarring the localizations (or creating your own) in the
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template directory, you must update the languages
parameter to contain any localizations you'd like to permit. You may
also wish to set the defaultlanguage parameter to something other than
"en" if you don't want Engish to be the default language.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2. Template Hooks
Template hooks are a way for extensions to Bugzilla to insert code
into the standard Bugzilla templates without modifying the template
files themselves. The hooks mechanism defines a consistent API for
extending the standard templates in a way that cleanly separates
standard code from extension code. Hooks reduce merge conflicts and
make it easier to write extensions that work across multiple versions
of Bugzilla, making upgrading a Bugzilla installation with installed
extensions easier.
A template hook is just a named place in a standard template file
where extension template files for that hook get processed. Each hook
has a corresponding directory in the Bugzilla directory tree. Hooking
an extension template to a hook is as simple as putting the extension
file into the hook's directory. When Bugzilla processes the standard
template and reaches the hook, it will process all extension templates
in the hook's directory. The hooks themselves can be added into any
standard template upon request by extension authors.
To use hooks to extend a Bugzilla template, first make sure there is a
hook at the appropriate place within the template you want to extend.
Hooks appear in the standard Bugzilla templates as a single directive
in the format [% Hook.process("name") %], where name is the unique
(within that template) name of the hook.
If you aren't sure which template you want to extend or just want to
browse the available hooks, either use your favorite multi-file search
tool (e.g. grep) to search the standard templates for occurrences of
Hook.process or browse the directory tree in
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/, which contains a directory
for each hook in the following location:
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/PATH_TO_STANDARD_TEMPLATE/STA
NDARD_TEMPLATE_NAME/HOOK_NAME/
If there is no hook at the appropriate place within the Bugzilla
template you want to extend, file a bug requesting one, specifying:
the template for which you are requesting a hook;
where in the template you would like the hook to be placed (line
number/position for latest version of template in CVS or description
of location);
the purpose of the hook;
a link to information about your extension, if any.
The Bugzilla reviewers will promptly review each hook request, name
the hook, add it to the template, check the new version of the
template into CVS, and create the corresponding directory in
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/.
You may optionally attach a patch to the bug which implements the hook
and check it in yourself after receiving approval from a Bugzilla
reviewer. The developers may suggest changes to the location of the
hook based on their analysis of your needs or so the hook can satisfy
the needs of multiple extensions, but the process of getting hooks
approved and checked in is not as stringent as the process for general
changes to Bugzilla, and any extension, whether released or still in
development, can have hooks added to meet their needs.
After making sure the hook you need exists (or getting it added if
not), add your extension template to the directory within the Bugzilla
directory tree corresponding to the hook.
That's it! Now, when the standard template containing the hook is
processed, your extension template will be processed at the point
where the hook appears.
For example, let's say you have an extension named Projman that adds
project management capabilities to Bugzilla. Projman has an
administration interface edit-projects.cgi, and you want to add a link
to it into the navigation bar at the bottom of every Bugzilla page for
those users who are authorized to administer projects.
The navigation bar is generated by the template file
useful-links.html.tmpl, which is located in the global/ subdirectory
on the standard Bugzilla template path
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/default/. Looking in useful-links.html.tmpl,
you find the following hook at the end of the list of standard
Bugzilla administration links:
...
[% ', keywords'
IF user.groups.editkeywords %]
[% Hook.process("edit") %]
...
The corresponding directory for this hook is
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/global/useful-links.html.tmpl
/edit/.
You put a template named projman-edit-projects.html.tmpl into that
directory with the following content:
...[% ', projects' IF user.groups.projman_admin
s %]
Voila! The link now appears after the other administration links in
the navigation bar for users in the projman_admins group.
Notes:
* You may want to prefix your extension template names with the name
of your extension, e.g. projman-foo.html.tmpl, so they do not
conflict with the names of templates installed by other
extensions.
* If your extension includes entirely new templates in addition to
extensions of standard templates, it should install those new
templates into an extension-specific subdirectory of the
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/ directory. The extension/
directory, like the default/ and custom/ directories, is part of
the template search path, so putting templates there enables them
to be found by the template processor.
The template processor looks for templates first in the custom/
directory (i.e. templates added by the specific installation),
then in the extension/ directory (i.e. templates added by
extensions), and finally in the default/ directory (i.e. the
standard Bugzilla templates). Thus extension templates can
override standard templates, but installation-specific templates
override both.
Note that overriding standard templates with extension templates
gives you great power but also makes upgrading an installation
harder. As with custom templates, we recommend using this
functionality sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.
* Installation customizers can also take advantage of hooks when
adding code to a Bugzilla template. To do so, create directories
in BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/custom/hook/ equivalent to the
directories in BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/ for the
hooks you want to use, then place your customization templates
into those directories.
Obviously this method of customizing Bugzilla only lets you add
code to the standard templates; you cannot change the existing
code. Nevertheless, for those customizations that only add code,
this method can reduce conflicts when merging changes, making
upgrading your customized Bugzilla installation easier.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3. Customizing Who Can Change What
Warning
This feature should be considered experimental; the Bugzilla code you
will be changing is not stable, and could change or move between
versions. Be aware that if you make modifications as outlined here,
you may have to re-make them or port them if Bugzilla changes
internally between versions, and you upgrade.
Companies often have rules about which employees, or classes of
employees, are allowed to change certain things in the bug system. For
example, only the bug's designated QA Contact may be allowed to VERIFY
the bug. Bugzilla has been designed to make it easy for you to write
your own custom rules to define who is allowed to make what sorts of
value transition.
For maximum flexibility, customizing this means editing Bugzilla's
Perl code. This gives the administrator complete control over exactly
who is allowed to do what. The relevant function is called
CheckCanChangeField(), and is found in process_bug.cgi in your
Bugzilla directory. If you open that file and grep for "sub
CheckCanChangeField", you'll find it.
This function has been carefully commented to allow you to see exactly
how it works, and give you an idea of how to make changes to it.
Certain marked sections should not be changed - these are the
"plumbing" which makes the rest of the function work. In between those
sections, you'll find snippets of code like:
# Allow the owner to change anything.
if ($ownerid eq $whoid) {
return 1;
}
It's fairly obvious what this piece of code does.
So, how does one go about changing this function? Well, simple changes
can be made just be removing pieces - for example, if you wanted to
prevent any user adding a comment to a bug, just remove the lines
marked "Allow anyone to change comments." And if you want the reporter
to have no special rights on bugs they have filed, just remove the
entire section which refers to him.
More complex customizations are not much harder. Basically, you add a
check in the right place in the function, i.e. after all the variables
you are using have been set up. So, don't look at $ownerid before
$ownerid has been obtained from the database. You can either add a
positive check, which returns 1 (allow) if certain conditions are
true, or a negative check, which returns 0 (deny.) E.g.:
if ($field eq "qacontact") {
if (Bugzilla->user->groups("quality_assurance")) {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that only users in the group "quality_assurance" can change
the QA Contact field of a bug. Getting more weird:
if (($field eq "priority") &&
(Bugzilla->user->email =~ /.*\@example\.com$/))
{
if ($oldvalue eq "P1") {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that if the user is trying to change the priority field, and
their email address is @example.com, they can only do so if the old
value of the field was "P1". Not very useful, but illustrative.
For a list of possible field names, look in data/versioncache for the
list called @::log_columns. If you need help writing custom rules for
your organization, ask in the newsgroup.
_________________________________________________________________
4.4. Modifying Your Running System
Bugzilla optimizes database lookups by storing all relatively static
information in the versioncache file, located in the data/
subdirectory under your installation directory.
If you make a change to the structural data in your database (the
versions table for example), or to the "constants" encoded in
defparams.pl, you will need to remove the cached content from the data
directory (by doing a "rm data/versioncache" ), or your changes won't
show up.
versioncache gets automatically regenerated whenever it's more than an
hour old, so Bugzilla will eventually notice your changes by itself,
but generally you want it to notice right away, so that you can test
things.
_________________________________________________________________
4.5. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
This information comes straight from my life. I was forced to learn
how Bugzilla organizes database because of nitpicky requests from
users for tiny changes in wording, rather than having people
re-educate themselves or figure out how to work our procedures around
the tool. It sucks, but it can and will happen to you, so learn how
the schema works and deal with it when it comes.
So, here you are with your brand-new installation of Bugzilla. You've
got MySQL set up, Apache working right, Perl DBI and DBD talking to
the database flawlessly. Maybe you've even entered a few test bugs to
make sure email's working; people seem to be notified of new bugs and
changes, and you can enter and edit bugs to your heart's content.
Perhaps you've gone through the trouble of setting up a gateway for
people to submit bugs to your database via email, have had a few
people test it, and received rave reviews from your beta testers.
What's the next thing you do? Outline a training strategy for your
development team, of course, and bring them up to speed on the new
tool you've labored over for hours.
Your first training session starts off very well! You have a captive
audience which seems enraptured by the efficiency embodied in this
thing called "Bugzilla". You are caught up describing the nifty
features, how people can save favorite queries in the database, set
them up as headers and footers on their pages, customize their
layouts, generate reports, track status with greater efficiency than
ever before, leap tall buildings with a single bound and rescue Jane
from the clutches of Certain Death!
But Certain Death speaks up -- a tiny voice, from the dark corners of
the conference room. "I have a concern," the voice hisses from the
darkness, "about the use of the word 'verified'."
The room, previously filled with happy chatter, lapses into
reverential silence as Certain Death (better known as the Vice
President of Software Engineering) continues. "You see, for two years
we've used the word 'verified' to indicate that a developer or quality
assurance engineer has confirmed that, in fact, a bug is valid. I
don't want to lose two years of training to a new software product.
You need to change the bug status of 'verified' to 'approved' as soon
as possible. To avoid confusion, of course."
Oh no! Terror strikes your heart, as you find yourself mumbling "yes,
yes, I don't think that would be a problem," You review the changes
with Certain Death, and continue to jabber on, "no, it's not too big a
change. I mean, we have the source code, right? You know, 'Use the
Source, Luke' and all that... no problem," All the while you quiver
inside like a beached jellyfish bubbling, burbling, and boiling on a
hot Jamaican sand dune...
Thus begins your adventure into the heart of Bugzilla. You've been
forced to learn about non-portable enum() fields, varchar columns, and
tinyint definitions. The Adventure Awaits You!
_________________________________________________________________
4.5.1. Bugzilla Database Basics
If you were like me, at this point you're totally clueless about the
internals of MySQL, and if it weren't for this executive order from
the Vice President you couldn't care less about the difference between
a "bigint" and a "tinyint" entry in MySQL. I recommend you refer to
the MySQL documentation . Below are the basics you need to know about
the Bugzilla database. Check the chart above for more details.
1. To connect to your database:
bash# mysql -u root
If this works without asking you for a password, shame on you !
You should have locked your security down like the installation
instructions told you to. You can find details on locking down
your database in the Bugzilla FAQ in this directory (under
"Security"), or more robust security generalities in the MySQL
searchable documentation.
2. You should now be at a prompt that looks like this:
mysql>
At the prompt, if "bugs" is the name you chose in the localconfig
file for your Bugzilla database, type:
mysql use bugs;
_________________________________________________________________
4.5.1.1. Bugzilla Database Tables
Imagine your MySQL database as a series of spreadsheets, and you won't
be too far off. If you use this command:
mysql> show tables from bugs;
you'll be able to see the names of all the "spreadsheets" (tables) in
your database.
From the command issued above, ou should have some output that looks
like this:
+-------------------+
| Tables in bugs |
+-------------------+
| attachments |
| bugs |
| bugs_activity |
| cc |
| components |
| dependencies |
| fielddefs |
| groups |
| keyworddefs |
| keywords |
| logincookies |
| longdescs |
| milestones |
| namedqueries |
| products |
| profiles |
| profiles_activity |
| tokens |
| versions |
| votes |
| watch |
+-------------------+
Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each tab
le have
descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs
.
attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to be
your
largest table, yet also generally has the fewest entries because file
attachments are so (relatively) large.
bugs: This is the core of your system. The bugs table stores most of
the
current information about a bug, with the exception of the info stored
in the
other tables.
bugs_activity: This stores information regarding what changes are mad
e to bugs
when -- a history file.
cc: This tiny table simply stores all the CC information for any bug
which has
any entries in the CC field of the bug. Note that, like most other tab
les in
Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their
unique
userid, stored as a primary key in the profiles table.
components: This stores the programs and components (or products and
components, in newer Bugzilla parlance) for Bugzilla. Curiously, the "
program"
(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some othe
r unique
identifier, like bug_id and user_id are elsewhere in the database.
dependencies: Stores data about those cool dependency trees.
fielddefs: A nifty table that defines other tables. For instance, whe
n you
submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQ
L.
groups: defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can u
niquely
identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allowe
d to
tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed
to edit
users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new g
roups is
assigned the bitmask of "4". By uniquely combining the group bitmasks
(much
like the chmod command in UNIX,) you can identify a user is allowed to
tweak
parameters and create groups, but not edit users, by giving him a bitm
ask of
"5", or a user allowed to edit users and create groups, but not tweak
parameters, by giving him a bitmask of "6" Simple, huh?
If this makes no sense to you, try this at the mysql prompt:
mysql> select * from groups;
You'll see the list, it makes much more sense that way.
keyworddefs: Definitions of keywords to be used
keywords: Unlike what you'd think, this table holds which keywords are
associated with which bug id's.
logincookies: This stores every login cookie ever assigned to you for
every
machine you've ever logged into Bugzilla from. Curiously, it never doe
s any
housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months.
However,
since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it m
akes
sense.
longdescs: The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments ar
e stored!
You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so s
peak
sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from th
e Bible
would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronologic
al, for
comments are played back in the order in which they are received.
milestones: Interesting that milestones are associated with a specifi
c product
in this table, but Bugzilla does not yet support differing milestones
by
product through the standard configuration interfaces.
namedqueries: This is where everybody stores their "custom queries".
Very
cool feature; it beats the tar out of having to bookmark each cool que
ry you
construct.
products: What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed
for the
product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes,
etc. It
will be nice when the components table supports these same features, s
o you
could close a particular component for bug entry without having to clo
se an
entire product...
profiles: Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user informa
tion was
stored? Here it is! With the passwords in plain text for all to see!
(but
sshh... don't tell your users!)
profiles_activity: Need to know who did what when to who's profile?
This'll
tell you, it's a pretty complete history.
versions: Version information for every product
votes: Who voted for what when
watch: Who (according to userid) is watching who's bugs (according to
their
userid).
===
THE DETAILS
===
Ahh, so you're wondering just what to do with the information above?
At the
mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a tabl
e with
this command (where "table" is the name of the table you wish to view)
:
mysql> show columns from table;
You can also view all the data in a table with this command:
mysql> select * from table;
-- note: this is a very bad idea to do on, for instance, the "bugs"
table if
you have 50,000 bugs. You'll be sitting there a while until you ctrl-c
or
50,000 bugs play across your screen.
You can limit the display from above a little with the command, wher
e
"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict info
rmation:
mysql> select * from table where (column = "some info");
-- or the reverse of this
mysql> select * from table where (column != "some info");
Let's take our example from the introduction, and assume you need to
change
the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know fro
m the
above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "b
ugs"
table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this da
tabase
change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify th
e
information is stored in the "bugs" table:
mysql> show columns from bugs
(exceedingly long output truncated here)
| bug_status| enum('UNCONFIRMED','NEW','ASSIGNED','REOPENED','RESOLVED
','VERIFIED','CLOSED')||MUL | UNCONFIRMED||
Sorry about that long line. We see from this that the "bug status" c
olumn is
an "enum field", which is a MySQL peculiarity where a string type fiel
d can
only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool, i
t's not
standard SQL. Anyway, we need to add the possible enum field entry
'APPROVED' by altering the "bugs" table.
mysql> ALTER table bugs CHANGE bug_status bug_status
-> enum("UNCONFIRMED", "NEW", "ASSIGNED", "REOPENED", "RESOLVED",
-> "VERIFIED", "APPROVED", "CLOSED") not null;
(note we can take three lines or more -- whatever you put in befor
e the
semicolon is evaluated as a single expression)
Now if you do this:
mysql> show columns from bugs;
you'll see that the bug_status field has an extra "APPROVED" enum th
at's
available! Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query p
age as
well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the exi
sting
scheme of things?
Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "v
erified"
in the perl code for Bugzilla -- wherever you find "verified", change
it to
"approved" and you're in business (make sure that's a case-insensitive
search).
Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a s
tatus
of "APPROVED" until you make the perl changes. Note that this change I
mentioned can also be done by editing checksetup.pl, which automates a
lot of
this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?
_________________________________________________________________
4.6. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
4.6.1. Bonsai
Bonsai is a web-based tool for managing CVS, the Concurrent Versioning
System . Using Bonsai, administrators can control open/closed status
of trees, query a fast relational database back-end for change,
branch, and comment information, and view changes made since the last
time the tree was closed. Bonsai also integrates with Tinderbox, the
Mozilla automated build management system.
_________________________________________________________________
4.6.2. CVS
CVS integration is best accomplished, at this point, using the
Bugzilla Email Gateway.
Follow the instructions in this Guide for enabling Bugzilla e-mail
integration. Ensure that your check-in script sends an email to your
Bugzilla e-mail gateway with the subject of "[Bug XXXX]", and you can
have CVS check-in comments append to your Bugzilla bug. If you want to
have the bug be closed automatically, you'll have to modify the
contrib/bugzilla_email_append.pl script.
There is also a CVSZilla project, based upon somewhat dated Bugzilla
code, to integrate CVS and Bugzilla through CVS' ability to email.
Check it out at: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/~tonyg/.
_________________________________________________________________
4.6.3. Perforce SCM
You can find the project page for Bugzilla and Teamtrack Perforce
integration (p4dti) at: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/ .
"p4dti" is now an officially supported product from Perforce, and you
can find the "Perforce Public Depot" p4dti page at
http://public.perforce.com/public/perforce/p4dti/index.html .
Integration of Perforce with Bugzilla, once patches are applied, is
seamless. Perforce replication information will appear below the
comments of each bug. Be certain you have a matching set of patches
for the Bugzilla version you are installing. p4dti is designed to
support multiple defect trackers, and maintains its own documentation
for it. Please consult the pages linked above for further information.
_________________________________________________________________
4.6.4. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2
Tinderbox is a continuous-build system which can integrate with
Bugzilla - see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tinderbox for details
of Tinderbox, and http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi to see
it in action.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 5. Using Bugzilla
5.1. Introduction
This 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, it does not necessarily have all
Bugzilla features enabled, and runs an up-to-the-minute version, so
some things may not quite work as this document describes.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
If 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:
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/.
1. Click the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link, enter your email
address and, optionally, your name in the spaces provided, then
click "Create Account" .
2. 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.
3. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
The 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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.
4. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.
5. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.
6. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for
adding short notes and tags to a bug.
7. *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.
8. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where
the bug was found.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. *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.
13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.
14. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.
15. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to
bugs. If there are any attachments, they are listed in this
section.
16. *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.
17. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.
18. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug
discussion here, if you have something worthwhile to say.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4. Searching for Bugs
The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find any
bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You
can play with it here:
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/query.cgi.
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.
Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts. See the Boolean
Charts help link on the Search page for more information.
_________________________________________________________________
5.5. Bug Lists
If 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.
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 owner.
Send mail to bug owners: Sends mail to the owners 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6. Filing Bugs
Years 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:
1. Go to Landfill in your browser and click Enter a new bug report.
2. Select a product - any one will do.
3. 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.
4. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7. Patch Viewer
Viewing 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 review
Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and cross-references
for the part of the patch you are looking at
Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no matter what
format it came from
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.1. Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer
The 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.2. Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches
To 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.3. Getting More Context in a Patch
To 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".
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.4. Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch
To 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.5. Linking to a Section of a Patch
To 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.)
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.6. Going to Bonsai and LXR
To 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).
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.7. Creating a Unified Diff
If 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8. Hints and Tips
This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have
been developed.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8.1. Autolinkification
Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing 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: http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which
get linkified in the obvious manner are:
bug 12345
comment 7
bug 23456, comment 53
attachment 4321
mailto:george@example.com
george@example.com
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
Most other sorts of URL
A 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8.2. Quicksearch
Quicksearch 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'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's front page, along with a
Help link which details how to use it.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8.3. Comments
If 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8.4. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9. User Preferences
Once 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:
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.1. Account Settings
On 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.2. Email Settings
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.
You can also do further filtering on the client side by using the
X-Bugzilla-Reason mail header which Bugzilla adds to all bugmail. This
tells you what relationship you have to the bug in question, and can
be any of Owner, Reporter, QAcontact, CClist, Voter and
WatchingComponent.
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 or users go on holiday.
Note
The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla
installations. If you can't see it, ask your administrator.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.3. Permissions
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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.10. Reports
To be written
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix A. The Bugzilla FAQ
This FAQ includes questions not covered elsewhere in the Guide.
1. General Questions
A.1.1. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
A.1.2. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
A.1.3. What major companies or projects are currently using
Bugzilla for bug-tracking?
A.1.4. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A.1.5. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?
A.1.6. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatibility with this other tracking software?
A.1.7. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL.
A.1.8. What is /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl?
A.1.9. My perl is not located at /usr/bin/perl, is there an easy
way to change it everywhere it needs to be changed?
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
A.1.11. Does bugzilla run under mod_perl?
2. Managerial Questions
A.2.1. Is Bugzilla web-based, or do you have to have specific
software or a specific operating system on your machine?
A.2.2. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and
levels? Do we have complete freedom to change the labels
of fields and format of them, and the choice of
acceptable values?
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics,
graphs, etc? You know, the type of stuff that management
likes to see. :)
A.2.4. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see
when you get an email?
A.2.5. Do users have to have any particular type of email
application?
A.2.6. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I
had outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug
template, could that template be imported into "matching"
fields? If I wanted to take the results of a query and
export that data to MS Excel, could I do that?
A.2.7. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be
used in other countries? Is it localizable?
A.2.8. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in
Word format? Excel format?
A.2.9. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is
simultaneous access to the same bug? Does the second
person get a notice that the bug is in use or how are
they notified?
A.2.10. Are there any backup features provided?
A.2.11. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
A.2.12. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to
install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of
skills does the person need to have? I need to find out
if we were to go with Bugzilla, what types of individuals
would we need to hire and how much would that cost vs
buying an "out-of-the-box" solution?
A.2.13. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire
people to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this
something that takes hours or weeks to install and a
couple of hours per week to maintain and customize or is
this a multi-week install process, plus a full time job
for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
A.2.14. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using
Bugzilla? Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies
needed as identified above?
3. Bugzilla Security
A.3.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving
me problems (I've followed the instructions in the
installation section of this guide)?
A.3.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
4. Bugzilla Email
A.4.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email
from Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
A.4.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
A.4.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something other than new
and reopened bugs. How do I do it?
A.4.4. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs
via email?
A.4.5. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's
extremely slow. What gives?
A.4.6. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
5. Bugzilla Database
A.5.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
A.5.2. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
A.5.3. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
A.5.4. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but
Bugzilla still can't connect.
A.5.5. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple
different Bugzilla databases?
6. Bugzilla and Win32
A.6.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32
(Win98+/NT/2K)?
A.6.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
A.6.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid
Windows NT application" error. Why?
A.6.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being
able to talk to to the database.
7. Bugzilla Usage
A.7.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
A.7.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler
way to query?
A.7.3. I'm confused by the behavior of the "accept" button in the
Show Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I
accept it?
A.7.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
A.7.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are
using it?
A.7.6. Why can't I close bugs from the "Change Several Bugs at
Once" page?
8. Bugzilla Hacking
A.8.1. What kind of style should I use for templatization?
A.8.2. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
A.8.3. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For
instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of
"P2"?
A.8.4. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines
should I follow?
1. General Questions
A.1.1. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
Bugzilla is covered by the Mozilla Public License. See details at
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/.
A.1.2. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
http://bugzilla.org/consulting.html is a list of people and companies
who have asked us to list them as consultants for Bugzilla.
There are several experienced Bugzilla hackers on the mailing
list/newsgroup who are willing to make themselves available for
generous compensation. Try sending a message to the mailing list
asking for a volunteer.
A.1.3. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla
for bug-tracking?
There are dozens of major companies with public Bugzilla sites to
track bugs in their products. We have a fairly complete list available
on our website at http://bugzilla.org/installation-list/. If you have
an installation of Bugzilla and would like to be added to the list,
whether it's a public install or not, simply e-mail Gerv
.
A.1.4. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A core team, led by Dave Miller (justdave@bugzilla.org).
A.1.5. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?
We can't find any head-to-head comparisons of Bugzilla against other
defect-tracking software. If you know of one, please get in touch.
However, from the author's personal experience with other
bug-trackers, Bugzilla offers superior performance on commodity
hardware, better price (free!), more developer- friendly features
(such as stored queries, email integration, and platform
independence), improved scalability, open source code, greater
flexibility, and superior ease-of-use.
If you happen to be a commercial bug-tracker vendor, please step
forward with a list of advantages your product has over Bugzilla. We'd
be happy to include it in the "Competitors" section.
A.1.6. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatibility with this other tracking software?
It may be that the support has not been built yet, or that you have
not yet found it. Bugzilla is making tremendous strides in usability,
customizability, scalability, and user interface. It is widely
considered the most complete and popular open-source bug-tracking
software in existence.
That doesn't mean it can't use improvement! You can help the project
along by either hacking a patch yourself that supports the
functionality you require, or else submitting a "Request for
Enhancement" (RFE) using the bug submission interface at
bugzilla.mozilla.org.
A.1.7. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL.
MySQL was originally chosen because it is free, easy to install, and
was available for the hardware Netscape intended to run it on.
There is currently work in progress to make Bugzilla work on
PostgreSQL and Sybase in the default distribution. You can track the
progress of these initiatives in bug 98304 and bug 173130
respectively.
Once both of these are done, adding support for additional database
servers should be trivial.
A.1.8. What is /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl?
Bugzilla used to have the path to perl on the shebang line set to
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl because when Terry first started writing the
code for mozilla.org he needed a version of Perl and other tools that
were completely under his control. This location was abandoned for the
2.18 release in favor of the more sensible /usr/bin/perl. If you
installed an older verion of Bugzilla and created the symlink we
suggested, you can remove it now (provided that you don't have
anything else, such as Bonsai, using it and you don't intend to
reinstall an older version of Bugzilla).
A.1.9. My perl is not located at /usr/bin/perl, is there an easy way
to change it everywhere it needs to be changed?
Yes, the following bit of perl magic will change all the shebang
lines. Be sure to change /usr/local/bin/perl to your path to the perl
binary.
perl -pi -e 's@#\!/usr/bin/perl@#\!/usr/local/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
At present, no.
A.1.11. Does bugzilla run under mod_perl?
At present, no. This is being worked on.
2. Managerial Questions
A.2.1. Is Bugzilla web-based, or do you have to have specific software
or a specific operating system on your machine?
It is web and e-mail based.
A.2.2. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and levels?
Do we have complete freedom to change the labels of fields and format
of them, and the choice of acceptable values?
Yes. However, modifying some fields, notably those related to bug
progression states, also require adjusting the program logic to
compensate for the change.
There is no GUI for adding fields to Bugzilla at this time. You can
follow development of this feature in bug 91037
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics, graphs,
etc? You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see. :)
Yes. Look at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/report.cgi for samples of
what Bugzilla can do in reporting and graphing.
If you can not get the reports you want from the included reporting
scripts, it is possible to hook up a professional reporting package
such as Crystal Reports using ODBC. If you choose to do this, beware
that giving direct access to the database does contain some security
implications. Even if you give read-only access to the bugs database
it will bypass the secure bugs features of Bugzilla.
A.2.4. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see when you
get an email?
Email notification is user-configurable. By default, the bug id and
summary of the bug report accompany each email notification, along
with a list of the changes made.
A.2.5. Do users have to have any particular type of email application?
Bugzilla email is sent in plain text, the most compatible mail format
on the planet.
Note
If you decide to use the bugzilla_email integration features to allow
Bugzilla to record responses to mail with the associated bug, you may
need to caution your users to set their mailer to "respond to messages
in the format in which they were sent". For security reasons Bugzilla
ignores HTML tags in comments, and if a user sends HTML-based email
into Bugzilla the resulting comment looks downright awful.
A.2.6. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I had
outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug template, could
that template be imported into "matching" fields? If I wanted to take
the results of a query and export that data to MS Excel, could I do
that?
Bugzilla can output buglists as HTML (the default), CSV or RDF. The
link for CSV can be found at the bottom of the buglist in HTML format.
This CSV format can easily be imported into MS Excel or other
spreadsheet applications.
To use the RDF format of the buglist it is necessary to append a
&ctype=rdf to the URL. RDF is meant to be machine readable and thus it
is assumed that the URL would be generated programatically so there is
no user visible link to this format.
Currently the only script included with Bugzilla that can import data
is importxml.pl which is intended to be used for importing the data
generated by the XML ctype of show_bug.cgi in association with bug
moving. Any other use is left as an exercise for the user.
There are also scripts included in the contrib/ directory for using
e-mail to import information into Bugzilla, but these scripts are not
currently supported and included for educational purposes.
A.2.7. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used in
other countries? Is it localizable?
Yes. For more information including available translated templates,
see http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. The admin
interfaces are still not included in these translated templates and is
therefore still English only. Also, there may be issues with the
charset not being declared. See bug 126226 for more information.
A.2.8. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word
format? Excel format?
Yes. No. Yes (using the CSV format).
A.2.9. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is simultaneous
access to the same bug? Does the second person get a notice that the
bug is in use or how are they notified?
Bugzilla does not lock records. It provides mid-air collision
detection, and offers the offending user a choice of options to deal
with the conflict.
A.2.10. Are there any backup features provided?
MySQL, the database back-end for Bugzilla, allows hot-backup of data.
You can find strategies for dealing with backup considerations at
http://www.mysql.com/doc/B/a/Backup.html.
A.2.11. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
Yes. However, commits to the database must wait until the tables are
unlocked. Bugzilla databases are typically very small, and backups
routinely take less than a minute.
A.2.12. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to
install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of skills does
the person need to have? I need to find out if we were to go with
Bugzilla, what types of individuals would we need to hire and how much
would that cost vs buying an "out-of-the-box" solution?
If Bugzilla is set up correctly from the start, continuing maintenance
needs are minimal and can be done easily using the web interface.
Commercial Bug-tracking software typically costs somewhere upwards of
$20,000 or more for 5-10 floating licenses. Bugzilla consultation is
available from skilled members of the newsgroup. Simple questions are
answered there and then.
A.2.13. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire people
to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this something that takes
hours or weeks to install and a couple of hours per week to maintain
and customize or is this a multi-week install process, plus a full
time job for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
It all depends on your level of commitment. Someone with much Bugzilla
experience can get you up and running in less than a day, and your
Bugzilla install can run untended for years. If your Bugzilla strategy
is critical to your business workflow, hire somebody with reasonable
UNIX or Perl skills to handle your process management and bug-tracking
maintenance & customization.
A.2.14. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using Bugzilla?
Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as identified
above?
No. MySQL asks, if you find their product valuable, that you purchase
a support contract from them that suits your needs.
3. Bugzilla Security
A.3.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving me
problems (I've followed the instructions in the installation section
of this guide)?
Run MySQL like this: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables". Please remember
this makes MySQL as secure as taping a $100 to the floor of a football
stadium bathroom for safekeeping.
A.3.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
The Bugzilla code has undergone a reasonably complete security audit,
and user-facing CGIs run under Perl's taint mode. However, it is
recommended that you closely examine permissions on your Bugzilla
installation, and follow the recommended security guidelines found in
The Bugzilla Guide.
4. Bugzilla Email
A.4.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email from
Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
The user should be able to set this in user email preferences (uncheck
all boxes) or you can add their email address to the data/nomail file.
A.4.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
Edit the "newchangedmail" Param. Replace "To:" with "X-Real-To:",
replace "Cc:" with "X-Real-CC:", and add a "To: ".
A.4.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something other than new and
reopened bugs. How do I do it?
Try Klaas Freitag's excellent patch for "whineatassigned"
functionality. You can find it in bug 6679. This patch is against an
older version of Bugzilla, so you must apply the diffs manually.
A.4.4. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs via
email?
You can find an updated README.mailif file in the contrib/ directory
of your Bugzilla distribution that walks you through the setup.
A.4.5. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's extremely
slow. What gives?
If you are using sendmail, try enabling sendmailnow in editparams.cgi.
If you are using an alternate MTA, make sure the options given in
Bugzilla/BugMail.pm and any other place where sendmail is called from
are correct for your MTA. You should also ensure that the sendmailnow
param is set to on.
A.4.6. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
Double-check that you have not turned off email in your user
preferences. Confirm that Bugzilla is able to send email by visiting
the "Log In" link of your Bugzilla installation and clicking the
"Email me a password" button after entering your email address.
If you never receive mail from Bugzilla, chances are you do not have
sendmail in "/usr/lib/sendmail". Ensure sendmail lives in, or is
symlinked to, "/usr/lib/sendmail".
5. Bugzilla Database
A.5.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
Red Hat's old version of Bugzilla (based on 2.8) worked on Oracle, but
it is now so old as to be obsolete, and is totally unsupported. Red
Hat's newer version (based on 2.17.1 and soon to be merged into the
main distribution) runs on PostgreSQL. At this time we know of no
recent ports of Bugzilla to Oracle; to be honest, Bugzilla doesn't
need what Oracle offers.
A.5.2. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
Run the "sanity check" utility (sanitycheck.cgi) from your web browser
to see! If it finishes without errors, you're probably OK. If it
doesn't come back OK (i.e. any red letters), there are certain things
Bugzilla can recover from and certain things it can't. If it can't
auto-recover, I hope you're familiar with mysqladmin commands or have
installed another way to manage your database. Sanity Check, although
it is a good basic check on your database integrity, by no means is a
substitute for competent database administration and avoiding deletion
of data. It is not exhaustive, and was created to do a basic check for
the most common problems in Bugzilla databases.
A.5.3. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
There is no facility in Bugzilla itself to do this. It's also
generally not a smart thing to do if you don't know exactly what
you're doing. However, if you understand SQL you can use the mysql
command line utility to manually insert, delete and modify table
information. There are also more intuitive GUI clients available.
Personal favorites of the Bugzilla team are phpMyAdmin and MySQL
Control Center.
A.5.4. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but Bugzilla
still can't connect.
Try running MySQL from its binary: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables". This
will allow you to completely rule out grant tables as the cause of
your frustration. If this Bugzilla is able to connect at this point
then you need to check that you have granted proper permission to the
user password combo defined in localconfig.
Warning
Running MySQL with this command line option is very insecure and
should only be done when not connected to the external network as a
troubleshooting step.
A.5.5. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple different
Bugzilla databases?
Well, you can synchronize or you can move bugs. Synchronization will
only work one way -- you can create a read-only copy of the database
at one site, and have it regularly updated at intervals from the main
database.
MySQL has some synchronization features builtin to the latest
releases. It would be great if someone looked into the possibilities
there and provided a report to the newsgroup on how to effectively
synchronize two Bugzilla installations.
If you simply need to transfer bugs from one Bugzilla to another,
checkout the "move.pl" script in the Bugzilla distribution.
6. Bugzilla and Win32
A.6.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32
(Win98+/NT/2K)?
Remove Windows. Install Linux. Install Bugzilla. The boss will never
know the difference.
A.6.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
Not currently. Bundle::Bugzilla enormously simplifies Bugzilla
installation on UNIX systems. If someone can volunteer to create a
suitable PPM bundle for Win32, it would be appreciated.
A.6.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid Windows
NT application" error. Why?
Depending on what Web server you are using, you will have to configure
the Web server to treat *.cgi files as CGI scripts. In IIS, you do
this by adding *.cgi to the App Mappings with the \perl.exe %s
%s as the executable.
Microsoft has some advice on this matter, as well:
"Set application mappings. In the ISM, map the extension for the
script file(s) to the executable for the script interpreter. For
example, you might map the extension .py to Python.exe, the
executable for the Python script interpreter. Note For the
ActiveState Perl script interpreter, the extension .pl is
associated with PerlIS.dll by default. If you want to change the
association of .pl to perl.exe, you need to change the application
mapping. In the mapping, you must add two percent (%) characters to
the end of the pathname for perl.exe, as shown in this example:
c:\perl\bin\perl.exe %s %s"
A.6.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able
to talk to to the database.
Your modules may be outdated or inaccurate. Try:
1. Hitting http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl
2. Download ActivePerl
3. Go to your prompt
4. Type 'ppm'
5. PPM> install DBI DBD-mysql GD
I reckon TimeDate and Data::Dumper come with the activeperl. You can
check the ActiveState site for packages for installation through PPM.
http://www.activestate.com/Packages/.
7. Bugzilla Usage
A.7.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
New in 2.16 - go to the Account section of the Preferences. You will
be emailed at both addresses for confirmation.
A.7.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler way to
query?
The interface was simplified by a UI designer for 2.16. Further
suggestions for improvement are welcome, but we won't sacrifice power
for simplicity.
A.7.3. I'm confused by the behavior of the "accept" button in the Show
Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I accept it?
The current behavior is acceptable to bugzilla.mozilla.org and most
users. You have your choice of patches to change this behavior,
however.
Add a "and accept bug" radio button
"Accept" button automatically assigns to you
Note that these patches are somewhat dated. You will need to apply
them manually.
A.7.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
The most likely cause is a very old browser or a browser that is
incompatible with file upload via POST. Download the latest Netscape,
Microsoft, or Mozilla browser to handle uploads correctly.
A.7.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are using
it?
In the Bugzilla administrator UI, edit the keyword and it will let you
replace the old keyword name with a new one. This will cause a problem
with the keyword cache. Run sanitycheck.cgi to fix it.
A.7.6. Why can't I close bugs from the "Change Several Bugs at Once"
page?
The logic flow currently used is RESOLVED, then VERIFIED, then CLOSED.
You can mass-CLOSE bugs from the change several bugs at once page.
but, every bug listed on the page has to be in VERIFIED state before
the control to do it will show up on the form. You can also
mass-VERIFY, but every bug listed has to be RESOLVED in order for the
control to show up on the form. The logic behind this is that if you
pick one of the bugs that's not VERIFIED and try to CLOSE it, the bug
change will fail miserably (thus killing any changes in the list after
it while doing the bulk change) so it doesn't even give you the
choice.
8. Bugzilla Hacking
A.8.1. What kind of style should I use for templatization?
Gerv and Myk suggest a 2-space indent, with embedded code sections on
their own line, in line with outer tags. Like this:
[% IF foo %]
[% FOREACH x = barney %]
[% x %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
Myk also recommends you turn on PRE_CHOMP in the template
initialization to prevent bloating of HTML with unnecessary
whitespace.
Please note that many have differing opinions on this subject, and the
existing templates in Bugzilla espouse both this and a 4-space style.
Either is acceptable; the above is preferred.
A.8.2. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
Try this link to view current bugs or requests for enhancement for
Bugzilla.
You can view bugs marked for 2.18 release here. This list includes
bugs for the 2.18 release that have already been fixed and checked
into CVS. Please consult the Bugzilla Project Page for details on how
to check current sources out of CVS so you can have these bug fixes
early!
A.8.3. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For
instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of "P2"?
This is well-documented in bug 49862. Ultimately, it's as easy as
adding the "---" priority field to your localconfig file in the
appropriate area, re-running checksetup.pl, and then changing the
default priority in your browser using "editparams.cgi".
A.8.4. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines should I
follow?
1. Enter a bug into bugzilla.mozilla.org for the "Bugzilla" product.
2. Upload your patch as a unified diff (having used "diff -u" against
the current sources checked out of CVS), or new source file by
clicking "Create a new attachment" link on the bug page you've
just created, and include any descriptions of database changes you
may make, into the bug ID you submitted in step #1. Be sure and
click the "Patch" checkbox to indicate the text you are sending is
a patch!
3. Announce your patch and the associated URL
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXXXX) for
discussion in the newsgroup (netscape.public.mozilla.webtools).
You'll get a really good, fairly immediate reaction to the
implications of your patch, which will also give us an idea how
well-received the change would be.
4. If it passes muster with minimal modification, the person to whom
the bug is assigned in Bugzilla is responsible for seeing the
patch is checked into CVS.
5. Bask in the glory of the fact that you helped write the most
successful open-source bug-tracking software on the planet :)
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix B. Contrib
There are a number of unofficial Bugzilla add-ons in the
$BUGZILLA_ROOT/contrib/ directory. This section documents them.
_________________________________________________________________
B.1. Command-line Search Interface
There are a suite of Unix utilities for searching Bugzilla from the
command line. They live in the contrib/cmdline directory. However,
they have not yet been updated to work with 2.16
(post-templatisation.). There are three files - query.conf, buglist
and bugs.
query.conf contains the mapping from options to field names and
comparison types. Quoted option names are "grepped" for, so it should
be easy to edit this file. Comments (#) have no effect; you must make
sure these lines do not contain any quoted "option".
buglist is a shell script which submits a Bugzilla query and writes
the resulting HTML page to stdout. It supports both short options,
(such as "-Afoo" or "-Rbar") and long options (such as
"--assignedto=foo" or "--reporter=bar"). If the first character of an
option is not "-", it is treated as if it were prefixed with
"--default=".
The column list is taken from the COLUMNLIST environment variable.
This is equivalent to the "Change Columns" option when you list bugs
in buglist.cgi. If you have already used Bugzilla, grep for COLUMNLIST
in your cookies file to see your current COLUMNLIST setting.
bugs is a simple shell script which calls buglist and extracts the bug
numbers from the output. Adding the prefix
"http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=" turns the bug list
into a working link if any bugs are found. Counting bugs is easy. Pipe
the results through sed -e 's/,/ /g' | wc | awk '{printf $2 "\n"}'
Akkana Peck says she has good results piping buglist output through
w3m -T text/html -dump
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix C. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
C.1. Instructions
If you need to install Perl modules manually, here's how it's done.
Download the module using the link given in the next section, and then
apply this magic incantation, as root:
bash# tar -xzvf .tar.gz
bash# cd
bash# perl Makefile.PL
bash# make
bash# make test
bash# make install
_________________________________________________________________
C.2. Download Locations
Note: some modules are in the core distribution of ActiveState Perl
for Windows. Others are not available. No PPM links have been provided
in either of these two cases.
CGI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI.pm/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/CGI.zip
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/CGI.html
TimeDate:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/TimeDate.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/lib/Date/F
ormat.pm
DBI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBI/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/DBI.zip
Documentation: http://dbi.perl.org/docs/
DBD::mysql:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/DBD-Mysql.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/lib/DBD/m
ysql.pm
File::Spec:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-Spec/
PPM Download Page: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/File-Spec.zip
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/File/Spec.
html
File::Temp:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-Temp/
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/File/Temp.
html
Template Toolkit:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Template-Toolk
it/
PPM Download Link: http://openinteract.sourceforge.net/ppmpack
ages/5.6/Template-Toolkit.tar.gz
Documentation: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs.html
Text::Wrap:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-Tabs+Wrap
/
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/Text/Wrap.
html
GD:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/GD.zip
Documentation: http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/GD/
Chart::Base:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Chart/
GD::Graph:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/GDGraph.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/Graph.pm
GD::Text::Align:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/
PPM Download Page: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/GDTextUtil.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/Text/Ali
gn.pm
MIME::Parser:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips
/6xx-builds-only/MIME-tools.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/lib/MIME
/Parser.pm
XML::Parser:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-Parser/
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/lib/XML/Parser
.html
PatchReader:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/author/JKEISER/Patc
hReader/
Documentation: http://www.johnkeiser.com/mozilla/Patch_Viewer.
html
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix D. GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place,
Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy
and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but
changing it is not allowed.
_________________________________________________________________
0. Preamble
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other
written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone
the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily,
this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get
credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for
modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative
works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It
complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft
license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free
program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the
software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it
can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License
principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
_________________________________________________________________
1. Applicability and Definition
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed
under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any
such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is
addressed as "you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the
Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with
modifications and/or translated into another language.
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of
the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the
publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall
subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall
directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is
in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain
any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical
connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal,
commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles
are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice
that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed,
as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that
the Document is released under this License.
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the
general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available
drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or
for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input
to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file
format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage
subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is
not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain
ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML
or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple
HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include
PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only
by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or
processing tools are not generally available, and the
machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output
purposes only.
The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself,
plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material
this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in
formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means
the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
_________________________________________________________________
2. Verbatim Copying
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either
commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the
copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies
to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no
other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further
copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept
compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough
number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and
you may publicly display copies.
_________________________________________________________________
3. Copying in Quantity
If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must
enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and
Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and
legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover
must present the full title with all words of the title equally
prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in
addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they
preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can
be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit
legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit
reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent
pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering
more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent
copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy
a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete
Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the
general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no
charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter
option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this
Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location
until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque
copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to
the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to
give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the
Document.
_________________________________________________________________
4. Modifications
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under
the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release
the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified
Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution
and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy
of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct
from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions
(which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section
of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version
if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the
Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal
authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has
less than five).
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
Version, as the publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications
adjacent to the other copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice
giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the
terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant
Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license
notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to
it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If
there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one
stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
Version as stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You
may omit a network location for a work that was published at least
four years before the Document itself, or if the original
publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
K. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the
substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in
their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent
are not considered part of the section titles.
M. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not
be included in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to
conflict in title with any Invariant Section.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or
appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material
copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all
of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the
list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice.
These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains
nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various
parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has
been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a
standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a
passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list
of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of
Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or
through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or
by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of,
you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit
permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License
give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or
imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
_________________________________________________________________
5. Combining Documents
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified
versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the
Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and
list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its
license notice.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and
multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single
copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but
different contents, make the title of each such section unique by
adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original
author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number.
Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of
Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History"
in the various original documents, forming one section entitled
"History"; likewise combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgements",
and any sections entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections
entitled "Endorsements."
_________________________________________________________________
6. Collections of Documents
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other
documents released under this License, and replace the individual
copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy
that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules
of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all
other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and
distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a
copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this
License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that
document.
_________________________________________________________________
7. Aggregation with Independent Works
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate
and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version
of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the
compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this
License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled
with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they
are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these
copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter
of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on
covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise
they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.
_________________________________________________________________
8. Translation
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may
distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4.
Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special
permission from their copyright holders, but you may include
translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the
original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a
translation of this License provided that you also include the
original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement
between the translation and the original English version of this
License, the original English version will prevail.
_________________________________________________________________
9. Termination
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document
except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt
to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and
will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However,
parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this
License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
parties remain in full compliance.
_________________________________________________________________
10. Future Revisions of this License
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the
GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions
will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in
detail to address new problems or concerns. See
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number.
If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this
License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of
following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or
of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the
Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version
number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not
as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
_________________________________________________________________
How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of
the License in the document and put the following copyright and
license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant
Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being
LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation
License".
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections"
instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover
Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts
being LIST"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we
recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of
free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to
permit their use in free software.
Glossary
0-9, high ascii
.htaccess
Apache web server, and other NCSA-compliant web servers,
observe the convention of using files in directories called
.htaccess to restrict access to certain files. In Bugzilla,
they are used to keep secret files which would otherwise
compromise your installation - e.g. the localconfig file
contains the password to your database. curious.
A
Apache
In this context, Apache is the web server most commonly used
for serving up Bugzilla pages. Contrary to popular belief, the
apache web server has nothing to do with the ancient and noble
Native American tribe, but instead derived its name from the
fact that it was "a patchy" version of the original NCSA
world-wide-web server.
Useful Directives when configuring Bugzilla
AddHandler
Tell Apache that it's OK to run CGI scripts.
AllowOverride, Options
These directives are used to tell Apache many things
about the directory they apply to. For Bugzilla's
purposes, we need them to allow script execution and
.htaccess overrides.
DirectoryIndex
Used to tell Apache what files are indexes. If you can
not add index.cgi to the list of valid files, you'll need
to set $index_html to 1 in localconfig so ./checksetup.pl
will create an index.html that redirects to index.cgi.
ScriptInterpreterSource
Used when running Apache on windows so the shebang line
doesn't have to be changed in every Bugzilla script.
For more information about how to configure Apache for
Bugzilla, see Section 2.2.4.1.
B
Bug
A "bug" in Bugzilla refers to an issue entered into the
database which has an associated number, assignments, comments,
etc. Some also refer to a "tickets" or "issues"; in the context
of Bugzilla, they are synonymous.
Bug Number
Each Bugzilla bug is assigned a number that uniquely identifies
that bug. The bug associated with a bug number can be pulled up
via a query, or easily from the very front page by typing the
number in the "Find" box.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is the world-leading free software bug tracking
system.
C
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
CGI is an acronym for Common Gateway Interface. This is a
standard for interfacing an external application with a web
server. Bugzilla is an example of a CGI application.
Component
A Component is a subsection of a Product. It should be a narrow
category, tailored to your organization. All Products must
contain at least one Component (and, as a matter of fact,
creating a Product with no Components will create an error in
Bugzilla).
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
CPAN stands for the "Comprehensive Perl Archive Network". CPAN
maintains a large number of extremely useful Perl modules -
encapsulated chunks of code for performing a particular task.
contrib
The contrib directory is a location to put scripts that have
been contributed to Bugzilla but are not a part of the official
distribution. These scripts are written by third parties and
may be in languages other than perl. For those that are in
perl, there may be additional modules or other requirements
than those of the offical distribution.
Note
Scripts in the contrib directory are not offically supported by the
Bugzilla team and may break in between versions.
D
daemon
A daemon is a computer program which runs in the background. In
general, most daemons are started at boot time via System V
init scripts, or through RC scripts on BSD-based systems.
mysqld, the MySQL server, and apache, a web server, are
generally run as daemons.
G
Groups
The word "Groups" has a very special meaning to Bugzilla.
Bugzilla's main security mechanism comes by placing users in
groups, and assigning those groups certain privileges to view
bugs in particular Products in the Bugzilla database.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is cool, we should talk about it.
M
Message Transport Agent (MTA)
A Message Transport Agent is used to control the flow of email
on a system. Many unix based systems use sendmail which is what
Bugzilla expects to find by default at /usr/sbin/sendmail. Many
other MTA's will work, but they all require that the
sendmailnow param be set to on.
MySQL
MySQL is currently the required RDBMS for Bugzilla. MySQL can
be downloaded from http://www.mysql.com. While you should
familiarize yourself with all of the documentation, some high
points are:
Backup
Methods for backing up your Bugzilla database.
Option Files
Information about how to configure MySQL using my.cnf.
Privilege System
Much more detailed information about the suggestions in
Section 2.2.2.1.
P
Perl Package Manager (PPM)
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/PPM/
Product
A Product is a broad category of types of bugs, normally
representing a single piece of software or entity. In general,
there are several Components to a Product. A Product may define
a group (used for security) for all bugs entered into its
Components.
Perl
First written by Larry Wall, Perl is a remarkable program
language. It has the benefits of the flexibility of an
interpreted scripting language (such as shell script), combined
with the speed and power of a compiled language, such as C.
Bugzilla is maintained in Perl.
Q
QA
"QA", "Q/A", and "Q.A." are short for "Quality Assurance". In
most large software development organizations, there is a team
devoted to ensuring the product meets minimum standards before
shipping. This team will also generally want to track the
progress of bugs over their life cycle, thus the need for the
"QA Contact" field in a bug.
R
Relational DataBase Managment System (RDBMS)
A relational database management system is a database system
that stores information in tables that are related to each
other.
Regular Expression (regexp)
A regular expression is an expression used for pattern
matching. Documentation
S
SGML
SGML stands for "Standard Generalized Markup Language". Created
in the 1980's to provide an extensible means to maintain
documentation based upon content instead of presentation, SGML
has withstood the test of time as a robust, powerful language.
XML is the "baby brother" of SGML; any valid XML document it,
by definition, a valid SGML document. The document you are
reading is written and maintained in SGML, and is also valid
XML if you modify the Document Type Definition.
T
Target Milestone
Target Milestones are Product goals. They are configurable on a
per-Product basis. Most software development houses have a
concept of "milestones" where the people funding a project
expect certain functionality on certain dates. Bugzilla
facilitates meeting these milestones by giving you the ability
to declare by which milestone a bug will be fixed, or an
enhancement will be implemented.
Tool Command Language (TCL)
TCL is an open source scripting language available for Windows,
Macintosh, and Unix based systems. Bugzilla 1.0 was written in
TCL but never released. The first release of Bugzilla was 2.0,
which was when it was ported to perl.
Z
Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs
found matching your query. When asked to explain this message,
Terry had the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this ... way back when, when Netscape
released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party.
Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug
before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is
not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with
every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party,
T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro
Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh.
So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can
think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs
matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
--Terry Weissman