The Fedora Prioritized Bugs process was introduced a few years ago to bring attention to bugs that are high-impact or highly-visible, but don’t violate the release criteria. I recently made some changes to how we implement this in Bugzilla that will help make it easier to handle. This post is to explain the change as well as remind the community that the process exists. This can only work with community input.

What changed?

When the process was first created, it used several fields in Bugzilla. This was a little bit tedious to manage and not particularly easy for users. It also caused collisions with how some development teams used Bugzilla. Specifically, they would use the Triaged keyword, which the Prioritized Bugs process used to indicate a nominated bug was accepted.

Now we use a Bugzilla flag called fedora_prioritized_bug instead. This has a few benefits:

  • No typos when I go to edit the bug
  • No collisions with other workflows
  • State is easily visible
  • Easier to script

If you’ve used flags in Bugzilla before (for example, in the package review process), this should be familiar. Anyone can nominate a bug by setting the fedora_prioritized_bug flag to ?. If the bug is accepted, the Program Manager will change the flag to +. If the bug is rejected, the Program Manager will change the flag to -.

What didn’t change?

The rest of it! We still meet every two weeks to evaluate nominated bugs and follow up on accepted bugs. “We” here is the Fedora Project Leader (FPL), Fedora Program Manager (FPgM), and any interested community members. The FPL or FPgM follows up with maintainers of the accepted bugs to help drive a solution or raise the priority with development teams.

How can I participate?

Anyone in the community can nominate a bug as a Prioritized Bug by setting the fedora_prioritized_bug flag to ?. If you do this, add a comment to explain why you think the bug should be accepted into the Prioritized Bugs process. You’re also welcome to participate in the review meeting. The time and channel is on Fedocal and I post the agenda the day before to the triage mailing list.

For more information, see the program management section of docs.fedoraproject.org.

Edited to add: The fedora_prioritized_bug flag is now available for components in the Fedora Modules product as well.