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Shuba Jagannathancb083d92020-11-02 00:21:371# Life of a Chrome OS Bug
2
3[TOC]
4
5Chrome OS maintains two public issue trackers where you can report bugs and
6request features for core Chrome OS functionality. (For details on this issue
7tracker, see [Reporting Bugs].
8
9Reporting bugs is great (thank you!), but what happens to a bug report after
10you file it? This page describes the life of a bug.
11
12>**Note:** The Chrome OS Public Issue Tracker is intended only for bugs and
13feature requests related to core Chrome OS functionality, and is a technical
14tool for the Open Source community.
15
16**This isn't a customer support forum.** For support information, see the
17[Chromebook](https://support.google.com/chromebook) help center.
18
19*** promo
20Here are the key stages in the life of a bug:
21
221. A bug is filed, and has the state **_New_**.
232. The internal team periodically reviews and triages bugs. Bugs are triaged
24into one of four **_buckets_**: New, Open, No-Action, or Resolved.
253. Each bucket includes a number of states that provide more detail on the
26fate of the issue.
274. Bugs marked **_Resolved_** will be included in a future release of Chrome
28OS.
29***
30
31## Bucket details
32
33We use the **Status** field in Issue Tracker to specify the status of an issue
34in the resolution process. This is consistent with the definitions specified
35in the [Issue Tracker documentation]
36(https://developers.google.com/issue-tracker/concepts/issues#status).
37
38### New issues
39
40New issues include bug reports that haven't been acted upon. The two states
41are:
42*** promo
43* **New:** The bug report hasn't been triaged (that is, reviewed by the
44Chrome OS team).
45* **Reassigned to reporter:** The bug report has insufficient information
46to act upon. The person who reported the bug needs to provide additional
47details before it can be triaged. If enough time passes and no new
48information is provided, the bug may be closed by default, as one of the
49No-Action states.
50***
51### Open issues
52
53This bucket contains bugs that need action, but that are still unresolved,
54pending a change to the source code.
55*** promo
56* **Assigned:** The bug report has been recognized as an adequately detailed
57report of a legitimate issue and the bug has been assigned to a specific
58contributor to assess and analyze.
59* **Accepted:** The assignee has acknowledged the issue and has started to
60work on it.
61***
62Typically, a bug starts in **Assigned**, and remains there until someone
63intends to resolve it, at which point it enters **Accepted**. However, note
64that this isn't a guarantee, and bugs can go directly from **Assigned** to
65one of the Resolved states.
66
67In general, if a bug is in one of the Open states, the Chrome OS team has
68recognized it as a legitimate issue, and a high-quality contribution fixing
69that bug is likely to get accepted. However, it is impossible to guarantee
70the completion of a fix in time for any particular release.
71
72### No-Action issues
73
74This bucket contains bugs that are deemed to not require any action.
75*** promo
76* **Won't Fix (Not reproducible):** The team attempted to reproduce the
77behavior described, and was unable to do so. This sometimes means that the
78bug is legitimate but simply rare or difficult to reproduce, or there wasn't
79enough information to fix the issue.
80* **Won't Fix (Intended behavior):** The team has determined that the
81behavior described isn't a bug, but is the intended behavior. This state is
82also commonly referred to as _working as intended (WAI)_. For feature
83requests, the team has determined that the request isn't going to be
84implemented in Chrome OS.
85* **Won't Fix (Obsolete):** The issue is no longer relevant due to changes
86in the product.
87* **Won't Fix (Infeasible):** The changes that are needed to address the
88issue aren't reasonably possible. This status is also used for issues reported
89that can't be handled, typically because it is related to a customized device
90or to an external app, or the reporter mistook this tracker as a help forum.
91* **Duplicate:** There was already an identical report in the issue tracker.
92Any actual action will be reported on that report.
93***
94### Resolved issues
95
96This bucket contains bugs that have had action taken, and are now considered
97resolved.
98*** promo
99* **Fixed (verified):** This bug has been fixed, and has been confirmed by
100testing on an official build, but may not necessarily be included in a formal
101release. When this state is set, we try to also set a property indicating
102which release it was fixed in.
103* **Fixed:** This bug has been fixed (or feature implemented) in a source
104tree, but might not yet have been tested against an official build.
105***
106## Maintenance
107
108The states and lifecycle above are how we generally try to track software.
109However, Chrome OS contains a lot of software and gets a correspondingly large
110number of bugs. As a result, sometimes bugs don't make it through all the
111states in a formal progression. We try to keep the system up to date, but we
112tend to do so in periodic _bug sweeps_ where we review the database and make
113updates.
114
115[Reporting Bugs]: reporting_bugs.md
116