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<sect id="rc-bugs">Managing release-critical bugs
<p>
-Release-critical bugs (RCB) are all bugs that have severity
-<em>critical</em>, <em>grave</em> or <em>serious</em>.
+Generally you should deal with bug reports on your packages as described in
+<ref id="bug-handling">. However, there's a special category of bugs that
+you need to take care of -- the so-called release-critical bugs (RC bugs).
+All bug reports that have severity <em>critical</em>, <em>grave</em> or
+<em>serious</em> are considered to have an impact on whether the package can
+be released in the next stable release of Debian.
Those bugs can delay the Debian release
and/or can justify the removal of a package at freeze time. That's why
-these bugs need to be corrected as quickly as possible. You must be
-aware that some developers who are part of the <url
-id="&url-debian-qa;" name="Debian Quality Assurance"> effort are
-following those bugs and try to help you whenever they are able. But if
-you can't fix such bugs within 2 weeks, you should either ask for help
+these bugs need to be corrected as quickly as possible.
+ <p>
+Developers who are part of the <url id="&url-debian-qa;"
+name="Quality Assurance"> group are following all such bugs, and trying
+to help whenever possible. If, for any reason, you aren't able fix an
+RC bug in a package of yours within 2 weeks, you should either ask for help
by sending a mail to the Quality Assurance (QA) group
&email-debian-qa;, or explain your difficulties and present a plan to fix
-them by sending a mail to the proper bug report. Otherwise, people
+them by sending a mail to the bug report. Otherwise, people
from the QA group may want to do a Non-Maintainer Upload (see
<ref id="nmu">) after trying to contact you (they might not wait as long as
usual before they do their NMU if they have seen no recent activity from you
bug log (that means you don't need to send a copy of the mail to
<email>123@bugs.debian.org</email>).
<p>
+Once you've dealt with a bug report (e.g. fixed it), mark it as
+<em>done</em> (close it) by sending an explanation message to
+<email>123-done@bugs.debian.org</email>. If you're fixing a bug by
+changing and uploading the package, you can automate bug closing as
+described in <ref id="upload-bugfix">.
+ <p>
You should <em>never</em> close bugs via the bug server <tt>close</tt>
command sent to &email-bts-control;. If you do so, the original
submitter will not receive any information about why the bug was
<p>
As a package maintainer, you will often find bugs in other packages or
have bugs reported against your packages which are actually bugs in
-other packages. The <url id="&url-bts-control;" name="BTS
-instructions"> document the technical operations of the BTS, such as
-how to file, reassign, merge, and tag bugs. This section contains
+other packages. The bug tracking system's features interesting to developers
+are described in the <url id="&url-bts-devel;" name="BTS documentation for
+Debian developers">. Operations such as reassigning, merging, and tagging
+bug reports are described in the <url id="&url-bts-control;" name="BTS
+control bot documentation">. This section contains
some guidelines for managing your own bugs, based on the collective
Debian developer experience.
<p>
Filing bugs for problems that you find in other packages is one of
the "civic obligations" of maintainership, see <ref id="submit-bug">
-for details. However handling the bugs on your own packages is
+for details. However, handling the bugs in your own packages is
even more important.
<p>
Here's a list of steps that you may follow to handle a bug report:
notification that your updated package has been installed into the
archive, you can and should close the bug in the BTS.
<p>
-If you are using a new version of <package>dpkg-dev</package> and you do
-your changelog entry properly, the archive maintenance software will close
-the bugs automatically. All you have to do is follow a certain syntax in
-your <file>debian/changelog</file> file:
+However, it's possible to avoid having to manually close bugs after the
+upload -- just list the fixed bugs in your <file>debian/changelog</file>
+file, following a certain syntax, and the archive maintenance software
+will close the bugs for you. For example:
+
<example>
acme-cannon (3.1415) unstable; urgency=low
one of the most concise and easiest to integrate with the text of the
<file>changelog</file>.
<p>
-If you want to close bugs the old fashioned, manual way, it is usually
-sufficient to mail the <file>.changes</file> file to
+If you happen to mistype a bug number or forget one in the changelog file,
+don't hesitate to undo any damage the error caused. To reopen wrongly closed
+bugs, send an <tt>reopen <var>XXX</var></tt> command in the bug tracking
+system's control bot. To close any remaining bugs that were fixed by your
+upload, email the <file>.changes</file> file to
<email>XXX-done@bugs.debian.org</email>, where <var>XXX</var> is your
bug number.
+ <p>
+Bear in mind that it is not obligatory to close bugs using the changelog
+like described above -- if you simply want to close bugs that don't have
+anything to do with an upload of yours, do it simply by emailing an
+explanation to <email>XXX-done@bugs.debian.org</email>.
<sect1 id="lintian-reports">Lintian reports
~ianmdlvl / developers-reference.git / blobdiff