86
votes
Accepted
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
In addition to Thomas' answer, a bug report that leads to a code change is just as much a part of your code's history as the requirements specifications, architecture documents, customer change ...
- 11.7k
85
votes
Accepted
Why are reproduction steps helpful for fixing software bugs?
To follow on from the car analogy, I've used the following in other contexts:
Say you took your car into the mechanic and said the battery keeps dying. He runs thorough tests on the battery and the ...
- 147k
72
votes
Why are reproduction steps helpful for fixing software bugs?
True story: A family has a problem with their new car. Every sunday the whole large family meets for lunch, then someone drives to the ice cream parlor and buys ice cream for everyone. And then a ...
- 42.6k
71
votes
Should I record a bug that I discovered and patched?
It depends on who the audience of a bug report is.
If it is only looked at internally by developers, to know what needs to be fixed, then don't bother. It's just noise at that point.
Non-exhaustive ...
- 10.5k
53
votes
Should I record a bug that I discovered and patched?
I'd say, it depends whether your product was released with the bug or not.
If it's released with the bug that you found, then yes, create a bug-report. Release cycles can often be long and you don't ...
- 13.2k
51
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
In addition to the other answers, the practicalities of software production process also influence this:
Bug fixes are usually not immediately put into production. Often it can be weeks or months ...
- 1,368
36
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
It depends on what you're going to do with the data. There are plenty of things that you can do if you keep track of resolved issues.
From a product quality perspective, you can keep track of ...
- 79.9k
32
votes
How to deal with a bug which seems to have fixed itself?
Revert your dev environment to the version that the bug was noticed in and verify that the bug is there.
If it is there then you can investigate the bug and make sure that the current version doesn't ...
- 25.7k
30
votes
Accepted
How to affect priorities to bugs to developers and treat them accordingly?
Generally you have two axes for bugs: gravity and frequency.
So obviously something grave and frequent is of the highest priority. However, something that's serious but happens rarely should be ...
- 22.7k
25
votes
Where to describe architectural problems?
If you are documenting a design or architecture of a system that has already been built, the document should describe it as-built and not as-designed or as-intended. If there are oddities or ...
- 79.9k
25
votes
Should I record a bug that I discovered and patched?
You should do this if it is a bug that could have been reported by a customer. Worst case: You fix the bug, but nobody knows. Customer reports the bug. Your colleague tries to fix the bug, but cannot ...
- 42.6k
23
votes
How to affect priorities to bugs to developers and treat them accordingly?
This really boils down to what you consider to be more important. The P2 bug or the new feature?
Usually an agile project management system will include some sort of prioritisation meeting where ...
- 70.9k
18
votes
What does it mean to "triage an issue" in programming?
Triage has a very specific meaning, but only within the field of medicine. When it comes to issue tracking, the term was borrowed from medicine and used in a similar way: a simple initial assessment ...
- 39k
18
votes
Why are reproduction steps helpful for fixing software bugs?
Complexity and discoverability.
The mechanic fixes dozens of cars which are basically the same every single day. He has a list of tests, which is reasonably fast to check and covers detecting all ...
- 8,601
18
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
Traceability - your code change is linked to a bug report, making it clear why it was done. Ideally, the bug report is linked to whatever requirement was not met or the test specification of the test ...
- 530
14
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
Often there is a good reason for a code change, as shown by the bug report, but a year later the reason is forgotten. Someone spots the bug fix code, thinks it is unnecessary complicated, and removes ...
- 42.6k
13
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
Aside from everything else that’s been mentioned, having a list of resolved bugs since the last release of the software is actually kind of critical for being able to write good release notes. Users ...
12
votes
Why are reproduction steps helpful for fixing software bugs?
You can't fix a problem you can't see most of the time. It depends in the context of your company BUT the developer will need to reproduce the error so it can be investigated/fixed .
An example:
...
- 1,001
11
votes
Who de-duplicates bug tickets?
Really, everyone should make a reasonable effort to avoid duplicates, but developers are usually in the best position to do so. Bugs can be found by many people, but usually are filtered to one ...
- 147k
10
votes
How can I get an anonymous user to submit bugs on a private GitHub project?
Someone on reddit created an open source Project called Gitreports where you can sign up and it will give you a unique URL you can give to your clients and they can submit bugs even to private repos ...
- 201
10
votes
Should I record a bug that I discovered and patched?
This depends on several factors.
Both Pieter B and Caleth list some in their answers:
Has the bug been part of an official release?
Is the number of bugs/time spent on them tracked specifically?
...
10
votes
Accepted
GitHub - Should I unassign an issue once closed?
In general you don't want to unassign an issue if it's closed.
There are two reasons why you don't want to do it:
If an issue is reopened then you want the original people to be involved
You want ...
- 460
10
votes
Accepted
Is it legit to close a bug as duplicate of another still open bug?
In the cases in which it is absolutely clear that the issue/root cause is the same (for example crashes with the same traceback occurring in the same conditions, only reported by different customers) ...
- 869
10
votes
Accepted
What would be a good metric of quality of a single bug fix?
If there was a metric to quantify a bugfix, including accounting that "it might result in even more bugs in the future", we would logically be able to use this metric during initial ...
- 45.2k
8
votes
Accepted
Track Bug fixes in code
You shouldn't track bug fixes in the code. It might make sense to track some unfixed bugs in the code, as a warning to other developers that look at that code that it has bugs that you didn't get ...
- 12k
8
votes
What are the benefits of tracking solved bugs?
Another reason is to track what ”areas” (being deliberately vague here, but excluding blaming people or micromanagement as a valid motivation) of your codebase introduce the most bugs.
For example, we ...
- 189
7
votes
How do I track tiny/small UI change requests in Agile?
Problems like these are what your retrospectives are for, because there is no "one true agile way" that will work best for everyone in the world, or even every team in a company. Brainstorm some ...
- 147k
7
votes
Accepted
Informing Users of Outstanding Bugs
This depends very much on the kind of software, the kind of bug and the possible impact of not telling your users about it.
For the majority of bugs, the only reasonable place where users need to be ...
- 200k
7
votes
Accepted
Why is the term "bug" very negative to some?
This question is surely opinion-based, but I've noticed this reaction as well. This question might be more appropriate for The Workplace, but even then it might not be the best fit.
The term "...
- 34.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible