3.
What Happens to a Bug Report after you Submit it
At any time after it is submitted, a bug report has a
“Status”
that describes how it is currently being handled. Here are the
possible values of Status and what they mean:
Unconfirmed
This is the initial status of a bug report, from the time it is
submitted until one of the maintainers reads it and decides
whether it is really a valid bug report. Sometimes the maintainers
aren't sure, and in the meantime leave the status as
“Unconfirmed”. In the worst cases, a bug report can
stay
unconfirmed for a year or longer, but this is considered a bad
thing and does not happen very often.
New
This means that the bug report has been read by one of the
maintainers, and is considered, for the moment at least, to be
valid. It does not necessarily mean that anything is going to be
done about it immediately: some bug reports, especially
enhancement requests, may be perfectly valid and still go for a
long time before anybody is able to deal with them. Many bugs, on
the other hand, are fixed within hours of being reported.
Assigned
This means that a specific person has agreed to work on the bug.
It does not, this world being the kind of world that it is, mean
that that person will actually do
anything in particular, so for practical purposes this status
means nearly the same thing as “New”.
Reopened
This means that the bug report was at some point considered by the
maintainers to be resolved (i.e., finished), but new information
came in that caused them to change their minds: most likely, a
change that was intended to fix the problem did not completely
work.
Needinfo
This is a status you should pay particular attention to. It means
that you did not supply enough information in your bug report to
enable anything to be done about it. In most cases, no further
action will be taken on the bug report until you supply additional
information (by adding a comment). If too much time goes by
without any input from you, the bug report will eventually be
resolved as “Incomplete”.
Resolved
This means that the maintainers believe that they have finished
dealing with the bug report. If you disagree, you can re-open it,
but since you cannot force anybody to work on a bug against their
will, you should have a good reason for doing so. Bugs can be
resolved in a variety of ways. Here are the possible values of
Resolution and what they mean:
Fixed
The bug report is considered valid, and
GIMP has been
changed in a way that is considered to fix it.
Wontfix
The maintainers agree that the bug report is valid, but it
would take so much effort to fix, in relation to its
importance, that it is not worth the trouble.
Duplicate
This means that the same bug has already been reported by
somebody else. If you see this resolution, you will also see
a pointer to the earlier bug report, which will often give
you a lot of useful information.
Notabug
This means that the behavior described in the bug
report is intentional. It may seem like a bug to you
(and there may be many people who agree with you), but
the program is working the way it was intended to
work, and the developers don't want to change it.
NotGnome
The bug report is valid, but it can't be addressed by
changing GIMP. Problems in operating
systems, window managers, or libaries that
GIMP depends on will often be
given this resolution. Sometimes the next appropriate step
is to file a bug report for the software that is really at
fault.
Incomplete
The bug report did not contain enough information for
anything to be done about it, and the reporter did not
respond to requests for more information. Usually a bug
report will be open for at least a month or two before it is
resolved in this way.
Invalid
Something is wrong with the form of the bug report: most
commonly, the reporter has accidentally submitted the same
bug report multiple times. (This can easily happen by
mistake with some web browsers.) Bug reports that
incorrectly describe how the program behaves may also be
resolved as Invalid.
Note
If you disagree with the resolution of a bug report, you are
always free to add your comments to it. Any comment added to any
bug report, resolved or not, causes email to be sent to the
GIMP
Bugzilla mailing list, so it will at least be seen by the
maintainers. This does not, of course, mean that they will
necessarily respond to it.
Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
