openSUSE KDE Bug Squashing Days

By einar

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Like everything, openSUSE is not perfect. Bugs crop here and there, or there is missing / quirky functionality that users may run into. Being a distribution of heterogeneous software, this means that bugs fall into these categories:

  • Upstream bugs in the software shipped by openSUSE

  • Bugs in the packaging

  • Bugs in distribution-specific setups or that derive from interactions with these setups (e.g. kernel, low level software stack, etc.)

To improve the distribution and to act like good FOSS citizens, distribution bugs need to be divided from upstream bugs: the former need to be properly fixed by openSUSE, the latter need to be communicated upstream so that everyone would benefit when they are fixed, including our favorite green distro.

Also, when dealing with bugs, one also runs into bugs that are invalid (local errors, for example), duplicated reports, or already fixed in newer versions.

So, how do we start improving openSUSE, and in particular the KDE part of openSUSE (since that’s what we’re talking about), from the current situation? An effective method is to triage open bug reports, verifying if they can be reproduced, reporting upstream bugs in the appropriate place, and closing off duplicate reports.

And to this aim, we will have a bug squashing session on 15th and 16th November, where you can help with reducing the number of KDE bugreports reported for openSUSE (and we for sure have more than enough of those). If you would like to help KDE in openSUSE, feel free to join.

There are no special technical knowledge requirements except for basics like being able to use the Bugzilla interface at http://bugzilla.novell.com. Having a recent KDE version installed is recommended (use either KDE:Release:49, KDE:Distro:Factory or KDE:Unstable:SC).

On the wiki page at http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Bug_Squashing_KDE we tried to sum up everything relevant (comment and corrections welcome). Please make sure you read the bug screening guidelines at http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Bug_Screening_KDE too.

If you want to help, hop during those days on the #opensuse-kde IRC channel on the Freenode network.

Happy bug hunting!

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