launchpadblog

Launchpad has a feature where it periodically checks the status of remote bugs (as in, bugs recorded in another bug tracker, like bug 12720 in Django).

When someone links a bug on Launchpad with a remote bug it’s called a bug watch. All the bug watches for a bug appear in the Launchpad bug page in an area called “Remote bug watches”. Check out bug 513719 to see a bug watch for bug 12720 in Django.

If the remote bug tracker has been set as the bug tracker for a project in Launchpad, bug tasks for that project can be linked to a specific remote bug too. When the status of the remote bug changes, Launchpad changes the status of the bug task to match, and sends out email to subscribers, the same as if the status had been changed in Launchpad. See the Django bug task in bug 513719 for an example.

Going further, comments can be synchronized too, in both directions. Recent versions of Bugzilla have this capability built in, but older versions can be supported with a plugin. There’s also a plugin for Trac.

This is all very nifty stuff, but it suffers because it doesn’t work very well! Yet.
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If you’re using edge, you can now just comment on a question in Launchpad. For all questions on Answers, the “Just Add a Comment” button is now always visible.

Previously, you might have only seen “Add Answer” and “Add Information Request” (or others; the exact buttons vary), both of which add a comment and cause the question status to change. But often, for example, all you want to do is clarify an earlier comment, add some detail, or give a progress update. For that, “Just Add a Comment”.

It’s been put at the rightmost position of all the buttons because we think it should be the least used option. Normally it’s appropriate to use one of the other buttons to move the workflow forward.

The button will land in production with the 3.1.10 release next week.

You may have noticed that we introduced some useful new options when filing bugs. These are especially useful to anyone who files lots of bugs.

Something for everyone.

Everyone can now set tags when filing a bug. Previously, only people going via the advanced bug filing page would have the option.

One caveat: the tag field is not yet wired up with the magical tag auto-completer that you can use on the bug page itself, but that’s coming.

Something for bug supervisors.

If you’re filing a bug against a project for which you’re a bug supervisor, some additional fields appear in the new Extra options area (which is collapsed by default, but can be expanded by clicking on it). There are options to let you to set the initial status, the importance and the milestone of the bug, and also assign it directly to someone to work on.

If you have any problems with these new features, please file bugs against Launchpad Bugs, or talk to the help contact in #launchpad on freenode.

Even if you’ve been living on Earth, you could be forgiven for not knowing about the richer tag syntax in the advanced bug search (e.g. in Bugs in Ubuntu: Advanced search), frankly because it’s very new and it’s not mentioned anywhere in the UI (yet). There are two additions to the syntax that a handful of hardcore Launchpadders have been yearning after for some time.

First up, you can search for bugs with any tag, doesn’t matter which, and for bugs with no tags. To search for the presence of one or more tags, use “*” (asterisk) in the query, and to search for the complete absence of tags, use “-*” (minus asterisk).

Secondly, you can search for the absence of a specific tag. Simply prefix the tag with a minus, e.g. “-toaster”.

You can combine these new forms as well. For example, to search for bugs with no tags at all or with no crumpet tag, you could search for “-* -crumpet“, making sure the Any radio button is selected. Everybody needs crumpets!

Have fun!

If you run into any problems, please report the bug in Malone.