What is "BugWeeks" ?

"BugWeeks" is a new initiative of the KDE BugSquad Team which tries to encourage more users to help us organizing the bug reports in our bugtracker
("BugWeeks" sessions are the improvement of our current "BugDays")

Why is this initiative needed? (and why it is so much important)

KDE software contains a lot of applications. As no software is perfect, these applications have bugs. Users report bugs to KDE's bug tracker, so that developers can review them and fix them eventually.

A lot of bugs are filed each day. However, not all of them are valid: some may have been already reported, some may have been already fixed in a more recent version of the KDE Software Compilation, or they may be non-KDE related (distribution packaging, other issues). Also, sometimes the reports don't contain enough information for the developer to track down the problem. As a result, it is difficult for the developers to find and solve issues in a timely manner.

That is where YOU can jump in! A simple and effective process to improve the situation is called "triaging", that is, verifying that the bugs are valid and contain the right amount of information. Triaging does not require any coding skills, so everyone can help.

A consequence is that developers will fix bugs faster, and the various KDE applications will become even better! All this is accomplished within a relatively short time frame. A perfect opportunity for everyone.

How BugWeeks sessions will work?

Interested users will be taught on how to organize those bug reports.

We will have regular BugWeeks sessions. Our proposed plan is to have 2 sessions per month.

At the beginning of each session, we will help the students/interested users to setup the working environment needed to test the reported bugs. We will also teach them some tips and hints about bug triaging.

During the main event, we are going to answer specific questions about any bug report on IRC and the forums.

Proposed schedule for every BugWeeks session



The week before the session: We will setup a poll to determine which will be the application to triage the next bugweek (the suggested options will be the products with more bug reports on them).

Day 1 - Day 5 (Monday-Friday): We will setup the bugweek. In the forums, we will also help the interested students to get a working and clean environment in order to test the bugs, and reply to common answers about the workflow and how to work with bugs (and with the bugs.kde.org interface).
There are going to be common articles explaining this too.

Day 6 - Day 7 (weekend): We will have the real "bugday". The students and applied users will work on the assigned bug reports (from the provided batches) and post the preliminary results in the forum thread. The mentors and other contributors and helpers will be on IRC and in the forums to answer specific questions.

Day 8 - End of that week (Monday): the users could continue to work (if they want to) and the mentors and contributors will start evaluating the results of the bugweek and collecting the information to generate a summary (to later close reports or make other changes effective)
Mentors will evaluate the students work and encourage them to join the BugSquad team permanently.

Quick FAQ about "triaging" bug reports

• Why is it useful? It makes bug hunting and fixing easier for developers, so more bugs get fixed.
  
• Why choose bug triage instead of X? It doesn't take much time to look over a bug, so it comes in nice small chunks
  
• What skills do I need to do it? Not much, just a bit of patience and sometimes some perseverance. We will provide you all the needed information, hints and support

How to join and get started

Stay tuned for more information