Re: Bug reports for for versions < 5.1.0

[John W. Eaton]

On 2/26/19 12:42 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 09:16:52 -0800, Rik wrote:
> > How should we handle bug reports for versions of Octave that are now
> > deprecated (< 5.1.0)?  I'm not thinking of reports which identify a
> > particular missing feature in Octave.  Instead, there seem to be a lot of
> > reports about issues which have since been fixed and are tied only to a
> > specific version (for example, slow start-up of the GUI on Windows in
> > 4.4.0).  My proposal would be to close them all as some distros do when a
> > version becomes obsolete and have users file a new bug report against a new
> > version of Octave if the behavior can still be found.
>
> Yeah, if a bug is clearly fixed in 5.1, it should definitely be closed
> as fixed. I think that's what we've always done.

Yes, I agree, even if it is not fixed in the version (or bug fix release 
for the version) listed in the bug tracker.  As I see it, that number is 
present to help us identify and reproduce the bug.  It should not 
represent an expectation or promise to fix the bug in that release series.

Also, it seems satisfying to close old reports and try to reduce the 
overall number of open reports, but I also don't want to do that unless 
they really are issues that we won't be fixing or the reports have 
insufficient information.  I don't want to close valid reports, even if 
they are years old.

> If it's not clear whether it's been fixed or not, I would re-tag it as
> 5.1.0 or dev, ask for someone to test it again in the current version,
> and close if there is no reply after several weeks.

If you can reproduce it with the current sources, then yes, I'd 
definitely change the version identifier to "dev".

If it's not clear that a bug has been fixed, when does that typically 
happen?  When the OS is something you don't have?  Or maybe it is due to 
library dependencies?  I'm not sure what to do with the Octave version 
number in the report in that case.

> I just re-tagged a bunch of open unfixed 5.0.x bugs against either 5.1.0
> or dev, depending on whether they seem like suitable stable fixes or
> development tasks.

Thanks.

jwe