06. July 2010

Bugzilla 4.0 Has a New Default Status Workflow

by Max Kanat-Alexander (mkanat)

So, as of just a few minutes ago, the trunk Bugzilla code has a new default status workflow that looks like this:

1. UNCONFIRMED
2. CONFIRMED
3. IN_PROGRESS
4. RESOLVED
5. VERIFIED

If you upgrade your installation to 4.0 (when it comes out), you will, by default, keep the old workflow, whatever it was. This is okay, except that there are now certain parts of Bugzilla (like, various pieces of text and so on) that assume you are using the new workflow, and we think the new workflow is much nicer, simpler, and clearer. So we’ve also included a script that will convert the old default workflow into the new default workflow, called contrib/convert-workflow.pl. We recommend that everybody convert to the new workflow, if you can.

If you want to see the new workflow in action, check out the bugzilla-tip demo installation.

Why Is There No NEW Status?

You might be asking yourself–why is there no “NEW” status in this new workflow? Well, we think that the status workflow should tell you something about the bug that the other fields don’t tell you about the bug. In particular, you can tell if a bug is new by looking at when the bug was filed, how many comments there are, who the assignee is, etc. In fact, in the past, a bug that had the “NEW” status may not have in fact actually been NEW–it was just not being worked on.

We feel that CONFIRMED and UNCONFIRMED both actually describe something more helpful about the bug and are more accurate than NEW.