Bug 443814

Created attachment 303499 [details]
ss

yikes.. slipped and hit enter.. :)

So.. Currently in buzilla there is no way to indicate by status that a bug is
blocked.  The current list of available status are:
ASSIGNED
NEEDINFO
MODIFIED
ON_DEV
VERIFIED
FAILS_QA
RELEASE_PENDING
POST

I am proposing that we add "BLOCKED" 

This would indicate that bug is blocked by another unresolved bug, and that
testing can not continue until the parent bug is fixed.

Even better if the parent bug is moved to on_qa the child bug also then
automatically moves to on_qa.

So I suspect that the blocker field would be required to be filled out if
blocker status is chosen.

Jeff Weiss made a good point that the child bugs should only be moved back to
on_qa when the parent blocker has been moved to verified..

thanks

How is just having the proper bug id in the proper dependencies field not
adequate  for this requirement? FWIW, the upcoming 3.2 release of Bugzilla will
actually enforce this on the backend. Meaning that the parent bug cannot be
resolved until the child bugs are resolved.

I am against adding additional bug statuses with out proper reasons since we
have been trying to scale back the amount of statuses. We are tying to utilize
other fields as much as possible to mean new things. For example, we used to
have a REOPENED bug status. Now we just put the bug to ASSIGNED and add a
keyword of Reopened which accomplishes the same. We could add a keyword of
Blocked if you think that would make it more obvious.

Dave

Well here is the logic to a "Blocked" status.

If you are unable to test a bug because the function is not ready or broken its
really not ON_QA.  The bug is not waiting for QA to do anything, the bug is
really waiting on development to fix something that is related.   Its also hard
to make the case that a blocked bug is ON_DEV.  I am sure at every qa or dev
meeting where  teams have to give a status on how many bugs are on their plates,
you will hear.. I have 20 bugs bug seven of them are blocked by bug #xyz.  If a
developer or tester cant work on a bug, it requires a status other whats available. 

Having the proper bug id in the dependencies really doesn't have anything to do
with the bugs status.  You may be able to infer the status of the child bug by
reading the parents bugs, but that is a waste of time.

Making sure you cant resolve the parent bug w/o the child bugs is a nice feature
but also unrelated.  The point of ON_QA/DEV vs Blocked is to find out which bugs
are available to be worked on.

Thanks

As part of the recent Bugzilla 2.4 upgrade the Bugzilla team are cleaning up bugs opened against old versions of Bugzilla. This bug has been flagged as an old bug and will be CLOSED WONTFIX in 7 days time.

If you believe this bug is an issue in the latest Bugzilla version please comment on this bug within 7 days. Doing so will ensure this bug is not closed automatically.

Thanks, the Bugzilla team.

Closing inactive bugs are part of Bugzilla cleanup.