[Bf-committers] Proposal for handling bug reports

[Campbell Barton]

Recently we've been getting more bug reports, and its getting to a
point where I don't think we can usefully manage them.
Or, to do so, takes more and more time away from development.

A lot of the work ends up being communication and many times they
aren't even real bugs.
Just the time to reply to issues, ask user to follow our guidelines
and submit blend files,
asking what version of Blender they use etc...

Its demotivating to have 100's of reports and try tackle the bug tracker,
only to find many reports which are in some unknown status where
nobody can redo the problem or understands what it is.

Even being more strict and moving issues to TODO, only helps so much.

So I'd like to do this a bit different:


Proposal
========

* add "Blender: Unconfirmed" project.

* If we get a valid bug report but can't redo it, we move immediately
to "Blender: Unconfirmed" with a canned response.

* 2 other people need to check the report.

* If after 2 weeks nobody can redo the issue, we close it.



This means users have some more responsibility to have others check
bugs, and redo.

It does risks closing valid issues sometimes, but at this point we
just have a bugs nobody can redo and nobody replies
to, so they arent useful to have open.
If the bug really happens for others probably it gets reported again anyway.

Of course if a report is incomplete we still mark as incomplete, if
its a TODO, move it,
this is for valid reports which give steps we can follow, but no way
to redo the bug.



Examples
======

- https://developer.blender.org/T40881
- https://developer.blender.org/T40877
- https://developer.blender.org/T40870
- https://developer.blender.org/T40864
- https://developer.blender.org/T40858
- https://developer.blender.org/T40838
- https://developer.blender.org/T40788
- https://developer.blender.org/T40787
- https://developer.blender.org/T40784
- https://developer.blender.org/T40753
- https://developer.blender.org/T39591
- https://developer.blender.org/T34962
- https://developer.blender.org/T39467


-- 
- Campbell