users are asked to manually select the source package for bugs

[Timmie]

Currently when you report a bug about a distribution, Launchpad asks you to specify which package the bug occurs in.

It may be possible to guess the package, based on the bug description you've entered. This would require moving the package field after the description field.

[This report previously also mentioned a field for the software version, which is bug 424; and package-specific bug-reporting guidelines, which is bug 43893.]

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Tim, having a field for which version of the software you're using is bug 424. And having package-specific bug-reporting guidelines is bug 43893.

So once bug 43893 is fixed, I think the missing step would be auto-suggesting which package the bug belongs in, based on what you've entered in the description. Does that seem right? If so I'll update the bug report accordingly.

[Timmie (timmie)]

Well, you understood my intent correctly.

But look at the report forms that bugzilla already provides. they are simple, gather all neccessary information and is ACCESSIBLE.

Launchpad just has a "free entry" from. This is NOT effective: It takes a lot of time. It will slow all projects down.
Why is it so difficult to implement a set of checkbuttons to attribute a bug to the corresponding versions of Ubuntu?
Why then not requesting the user for further information on the package based on the Ubuntu versions entered before.
Then you may come with reporting guidelines.

I often have to exchange numerous comments and mails with developers before they get clear what the bug is about.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Bugzilla is not "simple". (I should know, I designed part of it.) Every extra field reduces the number of bugs people will report, and increases the likelihood that developers will track some issues outside the bugtracker, making it less useful to everyone else.

But once a project becomes popular enough, adding fields is worthwhile, because the increased usefulness of bug reports that contain more information outweighs the cost of having fewer bug reports. Perhaps Ubuntu has reached that stage, so maybe it should have a field for specifying the software version, while smaller projects hosted by Launchpad should not. "What is so difficult" would be implementing the mechanism for only some projects to have those fields. Anyway, that's an issue for bug 424. I'll update this report to cover just the package guessing.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I implemented something like this for xorg, so people can file bugs against 'xorg' without needing to know the correct video driver or whatever to post against. I actually found that using the description for this was not terribly reliable, and instead mostly parse the attachments - the Xorg.0.log is a much more reliable indicator of the driver in use.

Having gone through that, there's a couple problems I see with generalizing this for any package. First, like I said, parsing the description is unreliable. It's also going to require a hefty amount of heuristics code, probably too much to download as an AJAX javascript routine, and likely imposing too much load to do it server-side.

I think something in more of a decision-tree format (c.f. apport-symptoms or the Bug Q&A story) is going to work a lot better for this, and would suggest that as a better solution.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Launchpad itself because there has been no activity for 60 days.]