# Using Bugzilla

## Introduction

This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There is a Bugzilla test installation, called Landfill, which you are welcome to play with (if it's up.) However, it does not necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled, and runs an up-to-the-minute version, so some things may not quite work as this document describes.

## Create a Bugzilla Account

If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account. Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL: .

1. Click the Open a new Bugzilla account

   link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the spaces provided, then click Create Account

   .

2. Within moments, you should receive an email to the address you provided, which contains your login name (generally the same as the email address), and a password. This password is randomly generated, but can be changed to something more memorable.

3. Click the Log In link in the footer at the bottom of the page in your browser, enter your email address and password into the spaces provided, and click Login.

You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies to remember you are logged in so, unless you have cookies disabled or your IP address changes, you should not have to log in again.

## Anatomy of a Bug

The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. Bug 1 on Landfill

is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks; clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every installation of Bugzilla.

1. Product and Component: Bugs are divided up by Product and Component, with a Product having one or more Components in it. For example, bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several Components:

   - Administration: Administration of a Bugzilla installation.
   - Bugzilla-General: Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans multiple components.
   - Creating/Changing Bugs: Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
   - Documentation: The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.
   - Email: Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.
   - Installation: The installation process of Bugzilla.
   - Query/Buglist: Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the buglists.
   - Reporting/Charting: Getting reports from Bugzilla.
   - User Accounts: Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in, etc.
   - User Interface: General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates, etc.

2. Status and Resolution:

   These define exactly what state the bug is in - from not even being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the fix confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the context-sensitive help for those items.

3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.

4. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.

5. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.

6. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes and tags to a bug.

7. *Keywords: The administrator can define keywords which you can use to tag and categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like crash and regression.

8. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where the bug was found.

9. Version: The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product which have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a Component have the particular problem the bug report is about.

10. Priority: The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her bugs. It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.

11. Severity: This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker ("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You can also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement request.

12. *Target: (a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is to be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future Bugzilla versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not restricted to numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such as dates.

13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.

14. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.

15. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there are any attachments, they are listed in this section.

16. *Dependencies: If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed (depends on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their numbers are recorded here.

17. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.

18. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have something worthwhile to say.

## Searching for Bugs

The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find any bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can play with it here: .

The Search page has controls for selecting different possible values for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some fields, multiple values can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla returns bugs where the content of the field matches any one of the selected values. If none is selected, then the field can take any value.

Once you've run a search, you can save it as a Saved Search, which appears in the page footer.

Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts. See the Boolean Charts help link on the Search page for more information.

## Bug Lists

If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.

The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed using the links at the bottom of the list:

- Long Format:

  this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields of each bug.
- CSV:

  get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g. a spreadsheet.
- Change Columns:

  change the bug attributes which appear in the list.
- Change several bugs at once:

  If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their owner.
- Send mail to bug owners:

  Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the list.
- Edit Search:

  If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you can return to the Query page through this link and make small revisions to the query you just made so you get more accurate results.
- Remember Search As:

  You can give a search a name and remember it; a link will appear in your page footer giving you quick access to run it again later.

## Filing Bugs

Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your reading pleasure into the Bug Writing Guidelines. While some of the advice is Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible, Specific bugs, isolating the Product you are using, the Version of the Product, the Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were using at the time of the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes for the bug that bit you.

The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:

1. Go to Landfill in your browser and click Enter a new bug report.

2. Select a product - any one will do.

3. Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If they are wrong, change them.

4. Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.

Try to make sure that everything said in the summary is also said in the first comment. Summaries are often updated and this will ensure your original information is easily accessible.

You do not need to put "any" or similar strings in the URL field. If there is no specific URL associated with the bug, leave this field blank.

If you feel a bug you filed was incorrectly marked as a DUPLICATE of another, please question it in your bug, not the bug it was duped to. Feel free to CC the person who duped it if they are not already CCed.

## Patch Viewer

Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that raw patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed to fix that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.

Patch viewer allows you to:

- View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying to interpret the contents of the patch.
- See the difference between two patches.
- Get more context in a patch.
- Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy reading.
- Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or review
- Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and cross-references for the part of the patch you are looking at
- Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no matter what format it came from

### Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer

The main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the "Diff" link next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may also do this within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As Diff" button in the Edit Attachment screen.

### Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches

To see the difference between two patches, you must first view the newer patch in Patch Viewer. Then select the older patch from the dropdown at the top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and this patch") and click the "Diff" button. This will show you what is new or changed in the newer patch.

### Getting More Context in a Patch

To get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at the top of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter. This will give you that many lines of context before and after each change. Alternatively, you can click on the "File" link there and it will show each change in the full context of the file. This feature only works against files that were diffed using "cvs diff".

### Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch

To view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a patch is absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a time), you can click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to expand it or collapse it). If you want to collapse all files or expand all files, you can click the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the top of the page.

### Linking to a Section of a Patch

To link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be able to give someone a URL to show them which part you are talking about) you simply click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The resulting URL can be copied and used in discussion. (Copy Link Location in Mozilla works as well.)

### Going to Bonsai and LXR

To go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in, you can click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are interested in. This works even if the patch is against an old version of the file, since Bonsai stores all versions of the file.

To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header (unfortunately, since LXR only does the most recent version, line numbers are likely to rot).

### Creating a Unified Diff

If the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it into a unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top of the page.

## Hints and Tips

This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have been developed.

### Autolinkification

Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will produce less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text. However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For example, the text "http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link: . Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:

- bug 12345
- comment 7
- bug 23456, comment 53
- attachment 4321
- mailto:george@example.com
- george@example.com
- ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
- Most other sorts of URL

A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment, you should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified for the convenience of others.

### Quicksearch

Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing "`foo|bar`" into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding "`:BazProduct`" would search only in that product.

You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's front page, along with a Help link which details how to use it.

### Comments

If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if either you have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it. Otherwise, you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail. To take an example: a user can set up their account to filter out messages where someone just adds themselves to the CC field of a bug (which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself to the CC field, and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that person gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.

Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable, if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art creations are not.

### Attachments

Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data, such as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't bloat the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to receive fat, useless mails.

Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.

Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one CSS file and an image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in reverse order and edit the referring file so that they point to the attached files. This way, the test case works immediately out of the bug.

## User Preferences

Once you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of Bugzilla via the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer. The preferences are split into three tabs:

### Account Settings

On this tab, you can change your basic account information, including your password, email address and real name. For security reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your current password into the Password field at the top of the page. If you attempt to change your email address, a confirmation email is sent to both the old and new addresses, with a link to use to confirm the change. This helps to prevent account hijacking.

### Email Settings

On this tab you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you from Bugzilla, opting in our out depending on your relationship to the bug and the change that was made to it.

You can also do further filtering on the client side by using the X-Bugzilla-Reason mail header which Bugzilla adds to all bugmail. This tells you what relationship you have to the bug in question, and can be any of Owner, Reporter, QAcontact, CClist, Voter and WatchingComponent.

By entering user email names, delineated by commas, into the "Users to watch" text entry box you can receive a copy of all the bugmail of other users (security settings permitting.) This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go on holiday.

The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla installations. If you can't see it, ask your administrator.

### Permissions

This is a purely informative page which outlines your current permissions on this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you are in, and whether you can edit bugs or perform various administration functions.

## Reports

To be written