Experiment-9

Aim: Study of Any Bug Tracking Tool (Bugzilla)

Bugzilla is a Bug Tracking System that can efficiently keep track of outstanding bugs in a product.
Multiple users can access this database and query, add and manage these bugs. Bugzilla essentially
comes to the rescue of a group of people working together on a product as it enables them to view
current bugs and make contributions to resolve issues. Its basic repository nature works out better
than the mailing list concept and an organized database is always easier to work with.

Advantage of Using Bugzilla:

1. Bugzilla is very adaptable to various situations. Known uses currently include IT support
queues, Systems Administration deployment management, chip design and development problem
tracking (both pre-and-post fabrication), and software and hardware bug tracking for luminaries
such as Redhat, NASA, Linux-Mandrake, and VA Systems.

2. Bugzilla can dramatically increase the productivity and accountability of individual

employees by providing a documented workflow and positive feedback for good performance.
Ultimately, Bugzilla puts the power in user’s hands to improve value to business while
providing a usable framework for natural attention to detail and knowledge store to flourish.
Bugzilla is organised in the form of bug reports that give all the information needed about
a particular bug. A bug report would consist of the following fields.
Product–>Component
Assigned to
Status (New, Assigned, Fixed etc)
Summary
Bug priority
Bug severity (blocker, trivial etc)
Bug reporter

Using Bugzilla:

Bugzilla usage involves the following activities

Setting Parameters and Default Preferences
• Creating a New User
• Impersonating a User
• Adding Products
• Adding Product Components
Modifying Default Field Values
Creating a New Bug
Viewing Bug Reports

Name: AKASH CHAURASIYA Roll no: 2104220130005

 Setting Parameters and Default Preferences:

When we start using Bugzilla, we’ll need to set a small number of parameters and preferences.
At a minimum, we should change the following items, to suit our particular need:

▪ Set the maintainer

▪ Set the mail_delivery_method.

▪ Set bug change policies.

▪ Set the display order of bug reports.

To set parameters and default preferences:

1. Click Parameters at the bottom of the page.

2. Under Required Settings, add an email address in the maintainer field.
3. Click Save Changes.
4. In the left side Index list, click Email.
5. Select from the list of mail transports to match the transport we’re using. If evaluating a
click2try application, select Test. If using SMTP, set any of the other SMTP options for
your environment. Click Save Changes.
6. In the left side Index list, click Bug Change Policies.
7. Select On for commentoncreate, which will force anyone who enters a new bug to enter a
comment, to describe the bug. Click Save Changes.
8. Click Default Preferences at the bottom of the page.
Select the display order from the drop-down list next to the When viewing a bug, show
comments in this order field. Click Submit Changes.

Creating a New User

Before entering bugs, make sure we add some new users. We can enter users very easily, with a
minimum of information. Bugzilla uses the email address as the user ID, because users
are frequently notified when a bug is entered, either because they entered the bug, because the
bug is assigned to them, or because they’ve chosen to track bugs in a certain project.

To create a new user:

1. Click Users.
2. Click add a new user.
3. Enter the Login name, in the form of an email address.
4. Enter the Real name, a password, and then click Add.

Name: AKASH CHAURASIYA Roll no: 2104220130005

 Select the Group access options. We’ll probably want to enable the following options in the row
titled User is a member of these groups:
editbugs
editcomponents

5. Click Update when done with setting options.

Impersonating a User

Impersonating a user is possible, though rare, that we may need to file or manage a bug in an
area that is the responsibility of another user when that user is not available. Perhaps the user is on
vacation, or is temporarily assigned to another project. We can impersonate the user to create or
manage bugs that belong to that user.

Adding Products

We’ll add a product in Bugzilla for every product we are developing. To start with, when we
first login to Bugzilla, we’ll find a test product called Test Product. We should delete this and
create a new product.

To add a product:

1. At the bottom of the page, click Products.

2. In the Test Product listing, click Delete.
3. Click Yes, Delete.
4. Now click Add a product.
5. Enter a product name, such as ―Widget Design Kit.
6. Enter a description.

7. Click Add. A message appears that you’ll need to add at least one component.

Adding Product Components

Products are comprised of components. Software products, in particular, are typically made up of
many functional components, which in turn are made up of program elements, like classes and
functions. It’s not unusual in a software development team environment for different
individuals to be responsible for the bugs that are reported against a given component. Even if there are other
programmers working on that component, it’s not uncommon for one person, either a project lead or manager,
to be the gatekeeper for bugs.

To add a component:

1. Click the link add at least one component in the message that appears after creating a

Name: AKASH CHAURASIYA Roll no: 2104220130005

 new product.
2. Enter the Component name.
3. Enter a Description.
4. Enter a default assignee. Use one of the users we’ve created. Remember to enter the
assignee in the form of an email address.
5. Click Add.
6. To add more components, click the name of product in the message that reads edit other
components of product <product name>.

Modifying Default Field Values

Once we begin to enter new bugs, we’ll see a number of drop-down lists containing default values.
Some of these may work just fine for our product. Others may not. We can modify the values of
these fields, adding new values and deleting old ones. Let’s take a look at the OS category.

To modify default field values:

1. At the bottom of the page, in the Edit section, click Field Values.
2. Click the link, in this case OS, for the field we want to edit. The OS field contains a list of
operating system names. We are going to add browsers to this list. In reality, we might
create a custom field instead, but for the sake of this example, just add them to the OS list.
3. Click Add a value. In the Value field, enter ―IE7. Click Add.
4. Click Add a value again.
5. In the Value field, enter ―Firefox 3.
6. Click Add.
7. Where it reads Add other values for the opsys field, click opsys.
8. This redisplays the table. We should now see the two new entries at the top of the table.
These values will also appear in the OS drop-down list when we create a new bug.

Creating a New Bug

Creating bugs is a big part of what Bugzilla does

best. To create a new bug:

1. In the top menu, click New.

2. If we’ve defined more than one component, choose the component from the component
list.
3. Select a Severity and a Priority. Severity is self-explanatory, but Priority is generally
assumed to be the lower the number, the higher the priority. So, a P1 is the
highest

Name: AKASH CHAURASIYA Roll no: 2104220130005

 priority bug, a showstopper.
4. Click the OS drop-down list to see the options, including the new browser names
we entered.
5. Select one of the options.
6. Enter a summary and a description. We can add any other information of choice, but it is
not required by the system, although we may determine that our bug reporting
policy requires certain information.
7. Click Commit. Bugzilla adds our bug report to the database and displays the detail page
for that bug.

Viewing Bug Reports

Eventually, we’ll end up with thousands of bugs listed in the system. There are several ways to
view the bugs. The easiest is to click the My Bugs link at the bottom of the page. Because we’ve
only got one bug reported, we’ll use the standard Search function.

To find a bug:

1. Click Reports.
2. Click the Search link on the page, not the one in the top menu. This opens a page titled
Find a Specific Bug.
3. Select the Status.
4. Select the Product.
5. Enter a word that might be in the title of the bug.
6. Click Search. If any bugs meet the criteria that we have entered, Bugzilla displays them
in a list summary.
7. Click the ID number link to view the full bug report.

Modifying Bug Reports

Suppose we want to change the status of the bug. We’ve reviewed it and
have determined that it belongs to one of the users we have created earlier

To modify a bug report:

1. Scroll down the full bug description and enter a comment in the Additional Comments
field.
2. Select ―Reassign bug to‖ and replace the default user ID with one of the other user IDs
you created. It must be in the format of an email address

Name: AKASH CHAURASIYA Roll no: 2104220130005