path: root/docs/xml/using.xml

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<chapter id="using">
  <title>Using Bugzilla</title>

  <section id="using-intro">
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. 
    There is a Bugzilla test installation, called 
    <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/">Landfill</ulink>, 
    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.</para>
  </section>
      
  <section id="myaccount">
    <title>Create a Bugzilla Account</title>

    <para>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: 
    <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/"/>.
    </para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Click the 
        <quote>Open a new Bugzilla account</quote>

        link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the
        spaces provided, then click 
        <quote>Create Account</quote>

        .</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Click the 
        <quote>Log In</quote>
        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 
        <quote>Login</quote>.
        </para>

      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>

    <para>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.</para>
  </section>

  <section id="bug_page">
    <title>Anatomy of a Bug</title>

    <para>The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular
    bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. 
    <ulink
    url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/show_bug.cgi?id=1">
    Bug 1 on Landfill</ulink>

    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.</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Product and Component</emphasis>: 
        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: 
        <simplelist>
        <member>
        <emphasis>Administration:</emphasis>
        Administration of a Bugzilla installation.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Bugzilla-General:</emphasis>
        Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans
        multiple components.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Creating/Changing Bugs:</emphasis>
        Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Documentation:</emphasis>
        The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Email:</emphasis>
        Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Installation:</emphasis>
        The installation process of Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Query/Buglist:</emphasis>
        Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
        buglists.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Reporting/Charting:</emphasis>
        Getting reports from Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>User Accounts:</emphasis>
        Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective.
        Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in,
        etc.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>User Interface:</emphasis>
        General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not
        functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates,
        etc.</member>
        </simplelist>
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Status and Resolution:</emphasis>

        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Assigned To:</emphasis>
        The person responsible for fixing the bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*URL:</emphasis>
        A URL associated with the bug, if any.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Summary:</emphasis>
        A one-sentence summary of the problem.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Status Whiteboard:</emphasis>
        (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes
        and tags to a bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Keywords:</emphasis>
        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Platform and OS:</emphasis>
        These indicate the computing environment where the bug was
        found.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Version:</emphasis>
        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Priority:</emphasis>
        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Severity:</emphasis>
        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Target:</emphasis>
        (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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Reporter:</emphasis>
        The person who filed the bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>CC list:</emphasis>
        A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Attachments:</emphasis>
        You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there
        are any attachments, they are listed in this section.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Dependencies:</emphasis>
        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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Votes:</emphasis>
        Whether this bug has any votes.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Additional Comments:</emphasis>
        You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have
        something worthwhile to say.</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
  </section>

  <section id="query">
    <title>Searching for Bugs</title>

    <para>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: 
    <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/query.cgi"/>.</para>

    <para>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.</para>

    <para>Once you've run a search, you can save it as a Saved Search, which 
    appears in the page footer.</para>

    <para>Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts. See the
    Boolean Charts help link on the Search page for more information.</para>
  </section>

  <section id="list">
    <title>Bug Lists</title>

    <para>If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.
    </para>

    <para>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: 
    <simplelist>
      <member>
      <emphasis>Long Format:</emphasis>

      this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields
      of each bug.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>CSV:</emphasis>

      get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g.
      a spreadsheet.</member>
      
      <member>
      <emphasis>Change Columns:</emphasis>

      change the bug attributes which appear in the list.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Change several bugs at once:</emphasis>

      If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same
      change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their
      owner.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Send mail to bug owners:</emphasis>

      Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the list.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Edit Search:</emphasis>

      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.</member>
      
      <member>
      <emphasis>Remember Search As:</emphasis>

      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.
      </member>
    </simplelist>
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="bugreports">
    <title>Filing Bugs</title>

    <para>Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your
    reading pleasure into the 
    <ulink
    url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/bugwritinghelp.html">
    Bug Writing Guidelines</ulink>. 
    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.</para>

    <para>The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Go to 
        <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/">
        Landfill</ulink>
        in your browser and click 
        <ulink
        url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/enter_bug.cgi">
        Enter a new bug report</ulink>.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Select a product - any one will do.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>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.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
    
      <para>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.
      </para>
      
      <para>
      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.
      </para> 

      <para>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.
      </para>
      
  </section>

  <section id="patchviewer">
    <title>Patch Viewer</title>

    <para>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.</para>

    <para>Patch viewer allows you to:</para>

    <simplelist>
      <member>View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying
      to interpret the contents of the patch.</member>
      <member>See the difference between two patches.</member>
      <member>Get more context in a patch.</member>
      <member>Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy
      reading.</member>
      <member>Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or
      review</member>
      <member>Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and
      cross-references for the part of the patch you are looking at</member>
      <member>Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no
      matter what format it came from</member>
    </simplelist>

    <section id="patchviewer_view">
      <title>Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer</title>
      <para>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.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_diff">
      <title>Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches</title>
      <para>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.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_context">
      <title>Getting More Context in a Patch</title>
      <para>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".</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_collapse">
      <title>Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch</title>
      <para>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.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_link">
      <title>Linking to a Section of a Patch</title>
      <para>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.)</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_bonsai_lxr">
      <title>Going to Bonsai and LXR</title>
      <para>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.</para>

      <para>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).</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_unified_diff">
      <title>Creating a Unified Diff</title>
      <para>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.</para>
    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="hintsandtips">
    <title>Hints and Tips</title>
    
    <para>This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices
    that have been developed.</para>

    <section>
      <title>Autolinkification</title>
      <para>Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing &lt;U&gt; 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:
      <ulink url="http://www.bugzilla.org"/>.
      Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:
      <simplelist>
        <member>bug 12345</member>
        <member>comment 7</member>
        <member>bug 23456, comment 53</member>
        <member>attachment 4321</member>
        <member>mailto:george@example.com</member>
        <member>george@example.com</member>
        <member>ftp://ftp.mozilla.org</member>
        <member>Most other sorts of URL</member>
      </simplelist>
      </para>
      
      <para>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.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="quicksearch">
      <title>Quicksearch</title>

      <para>Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses
      metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing
      "<filename>foo|bar</filename>" 
      into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the 
      summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding 
      "<filename>:BazProduct</filename>" would
      search only in that product.
      </para>

      <para>You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's
      front page, along with a 
      <ulink url="../../quicksearch.html">Help</ulink> 
      link which details how to use it.</para>
    </section>
    
    <section id="commenting">
      <title>Comments</title>

      <para>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.
      </para>
      
      <para>
      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.
      </para>      
    </section>
    
    <section id="attachments">
      <title>Attachments</title>
      
      <para>
      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.
      </para>      

      <para>Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if
      you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.
      </para>
      
      <para>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.
      </para>
      <para>Bugzilla stores and uses a Content-Type for each attachment 
      (e.g. text/html). To download an attachment as a different 
      Content-Type (e.g. application/xhtml+xml), you can override this 
      using a 'content-type' parameter on the URL, e.g.
      <filename>&amp;content-type=text/plain</filename>.
      </para>     
    </section>
  </section>
  
  <section id="userpreferences">
    <title>User Preferences</title>

    <para>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:</para>

    <section id="accountsettings" xreflabel="Account Settings">
      <title>Account Settings</title>

      <para>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 
      <emphasis>current</emphasis>
      password into the 
      <quote>Password</quote>
      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.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="emailsettings">
      <title>Email Settings</title>

      <para>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. 
      </para>
      
      <para>
      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.</para>

      <para>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.</para>

      <note>
        <para>The ability to watch other users may not be available in all
        Bugzilla installations. If you can't see it, ask your 
        administrator.</para>
      </note>
    </section>

    <section id="permissionsettings">
      <title>Permissions</title>
      
      <para>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.</para>
    </section>
  </section>
  <section id="reporting">
    <title>Reports</title>
    <para><emphasis>To be written</emphasis></para>
  </section>
  
</chapter>

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