[CentOS] CentOS Bug Reporting Policy

[Phil Schaffner]

Hywel Richards wrote:
> It looks like maybe I was right to be confused as to where to report 
> bugs as now there are two different answers.
> 
> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>> Hywel Richards wrote:
>>   
>>> Is there some policy as to what to do and where to report the bug?
>>>     
>> report it on bugs.centos.org unless you have a RHEL subscription and are 
>> able to also reproduce the exact same issue under the exact same 
>> conditions, in which case you should report it at bugzilla.redhat.com
>>   
> 
> Unfortunately I'm not in a position to do that - no RHEL subscription or 
> installation.
> This is why previously I've been hesitant to report any problems there.

I'm in the same boat, but have frequently jumped in on already-reported 
upstream bugs to confirm on CentOS, or asked other to see if the problem 
is in the upstream product for CentOS bugs.

>>> It doesn't seem appropriate to report it to http://bugs.centos.org 
>>> because CentOS is kept in-sync with the upstream, so bugs will never get 
>>> fixed in CentOS, only in the upstream distribution.
>>>     
>> Thats not really 100% black/white situation - if there is a major issue 
>> that has implications, and we are able to fix it locally we will always 
>> do that and users are quite welcome to jump over and move into the 
>> contributors side of things for such issues.
>>   
> 
> The ones I've encountered so far are typically not major - not 
> showshoppers for most people (otherwise they would get fixed a lot 
> faster without any intervention from me anyway).
> 
> An example is this sprof problem that I reported in July: 
> http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3021

Looks a lot like
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=458861
that is marked "Status: RELEASE_PENDING", so one might expect a fix in 5.3.

Added a note to the CentOS BZ and a link to CentOS to the upstream BZ.

> Another example is that the driver for my samsung printer prints garbage 
> in high quality mode (the default), but works fine in standard mode (a 
> useful thing to know).
> 
>> However, the reason I said you should really report issues at 
>> bugs.centos.org is that someone needs to first make sure it is indeed 
>> not an issue introduced by the CentOS process ( We had had a few of 
>> those as well ), and the issue needs to go upstream.
>>
>>   
> 
> This seems like a sensible policy to me.
> However, is there any process whereby bugs eventually get referred 
> upstream, if not by the original bug reporter?
> It seems to me that the examples I gave above are unlikely to be 
> introduced by CentOS, and should be appreciated by the upstream provider.
> 
> Whatever the system, I think it would be pretty useful to have something 
> written down somewhere, so that CentOS users like me know what to do 
> when they encounter bugs. E.g. for that sprof problem, I'm not sure if I 
> should wait on CentOS developers to process it (in which case there 
> isn't much to say), or whether I should be also reporting it to redhat, 
> as suggested in the other response, in which case I think further 
> instructions are necessary).

Often CentOS developers will either report upstream or ask others to do
so in the CentOS BZ notes.  A clearly-stated stated policy would
certainly help avoid confusion.

Phil