Guild of Writers

Shorah, Guild of Writers!

We over at the Guild of Maintainers are moving our bug recording technology from our forums to a Bugzilla database. We would like to extend an invitation to come over and get in on the action! Bugzilla's pretty cool -- it allows for easy bug recording, prioritizing your fixes, doing searches, and best of all, it allows many testers to add on to a single bug report. So there shouldn't be too many duplicate bugs, and nothing should get lost, because you can search for everything you haven't addressed.

We will maintain a thread for each of your projects in the Inspections forum, so that anyone who needs to ask questions or discuss things can reach you in a non-reporting situation. However, we would like to close down the huge pile of forums and tidy it all up to a nice neat few threads, so the sooner we can get you folks on board for Bugzilla, the better!

Bugzilla is almost all set up and ready to go -- but I need some help from you folks! Each Age and Shell that we are testing for you folks counts as a Product. Those Products need to be assigned to the correct Writers. So, if you are in charge of an Age or a Shell or other Uru modification, can I ask you to please do the following:

1. Sign up for our Bugzilla database! Directions on how to do this will follow in the next post.
2. Send me a PM indicating which Age, Shell, or other modification you are in charge of, and your email address that you used to sign up for Bugzilla. This will allow me to customize the Bugzilla database to correctly include your project and its various components, like sounds, textures, and lighting.
3. If there are multiple people working on a single project, that's fine! Each of them needs a Bugzilla account. Then just indicate in your PM who is in charge of which parts of the project, and their email. For example, if you have a modeler and a texture artist, let me know who is associated with modeling and who is associated with textures.

That's it!

Thanks much! Directions for signing up are in the next post. I'll also post a quick tutorial on the basic search features and bug report features of Bugzilla.

Bugzilla Basics: Getting Started

1. Point your browser at http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/bugtracking/
This is the main gateway for our Bugzilla database.

2. Click "create a new account".

3. Enter your email address where prompted. Bugzilla unfortunately doesn't run on the GoMa site login. Use an email address that you'll read for bug information and notification.

4. Check your email! You should get a message from bugzilla-daemon@guildofmaintainers.org indicating that you've asked to sign up for Bugzilla. If you don't see the mail right away, make sure you check your spam folder as well. Click the confirmation link in the email to go back to the site and confirm your account.

5. At this point, you should be able to create a Real Name and a password for your account. Please use whatever name the Guild of Maintainers and Guild of Writers know you as -- so, for example, I've used Jishin. Make sure you select a nice secure password.

6. At this point, you have a Bugzilla account and you're ready to go! Check out the next two posts for the basic tutorials on the bug reports and searching!

Bugzilla (on the Writers end!)

First off: the anatomy of a Bugzilla bug report.


The bug report shows a general summary, the bug number, what component is affected, what hardware and OS is being used, the status and resolution, the priority, and the severity of the bug. It also notes what gender the avatar is that is experiencing the bug. You can't see the description of the bug in this screenshot; it's down further below "Additional Comments". Trust me, it's there.

Should you wish to ask questions of the Maintainer(s) who are reporting the bug, just use the Additional Comments field, and the reporter and commenters should receive email regarding your questions. They can then respond to you via the comment feature as well.

The optional feature that may be most useful for you folks is "Priority", which allows you to tag the bugs in levels of priority for you to fix. You've also got the option of setting estimations of time to fix and a deadline. The Maintainers won't be setting any of those for you; those are totally up to you if you want to use them. However, we will indicate the Severity of the bug for you so that you've got some idea as to whether or not it's a showstopper or just a cosmetic thing that needs fixing.

There's an Add CC: field, so if there is someone else you want to look at the bug, simply add them to the Add CC: field.

Additionally, you'll note the Depends on and Blocks fields. "Depends On" is for if the bug requires a specific sequence of events or files. "Depends on: Age LD34 not installed", for example. "Blocks" is for if the bug prevents you from doing other things that you would normally be able to do. "Blocks: KI camera usage" for example.

Searching In Bugzilla

1. Log into Bugzilla ( http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/bugtracking ) if you don't already have it open.

2. For a simple search, choose "Search" in the Bugzilla toolbar, and pick the Find a Specific Bug tab. Select the Status of the bug (Open, Closed, or All ). Then pick the Product you're interested in -- that's probably yours! A Product is usually an Age, but sometimes it's an Ahra Pahts shell or other Uru component. Finally, enter a few keywords that are appropriate to the bug you're looking for, such as "crash, freeze, black screen of death" (well, OK, I hope you never have to enter those words!).

For a more complex search, pick the Advanced Search tab, which will give you lots of options to search by. I like this one, as I can pick a single product and shift-click all Status options to see all bugs in a single product. This is probably the most useful for you folks! Here's a screencap of what the Advanced Search looks like. If I were to run this search, it would return all bugs in Ahra Pahts -- Shell 111 that had a status of New, Assigned, or Reopened. It's really useful!



There is more complex reporting that you can do with Bugzilla, including securing who is allowed to access your bug reports, and telling it to nag you about bugs you haven't fixed yet. If you're interested in the more advanced features, please speak with me about getting them set up for you! Thanks!

Jishin wrote:5. At this point, you should be able to create a Real Name and a password for your account. Please use whatever name the Guild of Maintainers and Guild of Writers know you as -- so, for example, I've used Jishin. Make sure you select a nice secure password.

Is there a problem with apostrophes? I was able to create my account but could not login with username D'Lanor.

The username or password you entered is not valid.

I am pretty sure the password is correct so it has to choke on the username.

That's a good question. My guess is that that's most likely the problem, since it doesn't use our standard login. I'm not an expert coder myself, but I'll bring it to Nynaveve's attention and see if we can get it fixed.

Thanks for letting me know!

Edit: Wait -- no, I misread what you said. When you log in, try using the email you signed up with, rather than your Real Name. (: That should fix it.

Thanks, that worked. Grr, why do email addresses have to be so long?