BMO/How to Use Bugzilla

How to use Bugzilla(.mozilla.org)

This is currently a draft for a Bugzilla Users' Guide specific to bugzilla.mozilla.org users -- bug reporters, people submitting fixes, code reviewers, triagers, release teams, and others.

BMO vs Bugzilla

What is Bugzilla, what is bmo, and how are they different?

Bugzilla is an open source project that anyone can download and install, run by volunteers.

Bugzilla.mozilla.org, or BMO, is a specific implementation of Bugzilla, with extra extensions and customizations, maintained by Mozilla.

How to report a bug

To report a bug, you will need an account on bugzilla.mozilla.org. Bug triagers, developers, and QA folks will need to be able to understand and reproduce the bug.

• Give the bug a specific and descriptive summary.
• Describe the exact steps to make the bug happen again.
• Attach a screen shot, a link, or code, if that will help others understand the bug.

Bugzilla Helper

If you're new to bugzilla.mozilla.org, you'll see the Bugzilla Helper form. This form walks you through three steps in filing a bug.

Step 1 of 3: Choose a product. Where is your bug? It might in Firefox, Firefox OS, or some other product. Click the one that is your best guess.

(BMO-bugzillahelper1.png)

Step 2 of 3: Summarize the bug.

Write a short summary of your bug. It should be specific, clear, descriptive, and searchable. Think of it as a title for the bug.

(BMO-bugzillahelper2.png)

After you type in your bug summary, click the "Find similar issues" button. You will get a list of bugs that may be similar to yours.

There is good news and bad news here! The bad: there isn't necessarily an easy way to judge if your bug has already been filed. It takes a little bit of reading and thought. The good news is that scanning this list can help you avoid making a duplicate bug, and keep you informed on related issues.

For this list of similar issues, you may be able to tell from one of the summaries that your bug has already been reported by someone else. Or, to look deeper into the similar bugs, click on a bug number in the left-hand column, opening it in a new tab. Maybe you can tell that it's the same as the bug you intended to file. In that case, you can click "Follow" in the rightmost column if you want to be cc-ed on changes that happen to the bug.

If you don't find your bug, you are now ready to create a new bug report.

Step 3 of 3:

Bugzilla Helper gives you three questions to answer. "What did you do?" This helps other people to try to recreate your bug. "What happened?" where you can explain the bad or buggy behavior.

Once you're used to filing bugs, you can switch to the advanced bug entry form.

There's a detailed guide to making your bug as well formed as possible, the Bug writing guidelines on MDN.

needinfo flag

If you have a question about a bug, and you'd like to direct that question to a specific person, you can do that easily with the needinfo flag.

(screenshot of individual bug with needinfo checked and dropdown menu open)

The person you need info from will get bugmail with (look up the X-Bugzilla-header) in the header. This may get a person's attention faster than adding them to the CC list of a bug.

You can see the needinfo flags you have requested of others and the ones requested of you in your Dashboard.

(screenshot of dashboard)

dashboards

trying to answer the "what should i do today" question? go no further than the dashboards.

Products and components

Explain a bit and link to their descriptions, and the module owners page

Searching bugzilla.mozilla.org

Why do we have so many ways to search bmo, and how do they work?

Quicksearch

Quickseach rocks! You should use it.

Advanced search

Advanced search looks hardcore, but the rewards for learning how to drive it are plentiful.

Search pronouns

also, pronouns are amazing

Bugmail

bugmail filtering (via x- headers)

too much bugmail? filter!

Bug tagging

Want to organize or keep track of bugs? Use tags.

You can tag a bug with something that will help you find it later in a search. Or you may be tagging a bug to bring it to the attention of a person or a team.

There are three ways to tag in BMO: whiteboard field, keywords, and saved search tags.

What are all these keywords and weird whiteboard stuff? What is a whiteboard anyhow? Which should I use?

Keywords

These are a limited set of keyword tags, set by teams and people with admin privilege. You can start typing a tag and get a dropdown menu of all the keywords currently available. Keywords like "regression" and "crash" are used by engineering, release, and QA teams, for example.

Whiteboard

The whiteboard field is for free tagging. It's used both by teams and by people who want to track bugs they're interested in.

Bugzilla tips: http://bugzillatips.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/tagging/

Saved search tags

At the bottom of every page in BMO you will see the option to "Add the named tag ___ to bugs ____". Tags you create here are private to you by default, though you can share them with groups through the saved search interface.

tracking flags

tracking-firefox-25? who's doing the tracking? should i even set these flags? When and why?

api (xmlrpc, jsonrpc, jsonp, rest)

I hear you want to integrate with bmo. where to start, what to do next, and best practices which won't get you blocked

copy of bmo database

Before you point wget at bmo, we can give you a dump of the database. really.

custom reports

For when advanced searching isn't advanced enough .. ask a bmo developer to write you a custom report.

whining

bugzilla can automatically send you buglists (requires canconfirm)