PEP: 3
Title: Guidelines for Handling Bug Reports
Version: $Revision$
Author: jeremy@beopen.com (Jeremy Hylton)
Status: Active
Type: Informational
Created: 25-Sep-2000
Post-History:

Introduction

    This PEP contains guidelines for handling bug reports to the
    Python project on SourceForge[1].  Still to be done is to collect
    a list of people willing to handle bug reports and their areas of
    expertise.


Guidelines

    1. Make sure the bug category and bug group are correct.  If they
       are correct, it is easier for someone interested in helping to
       find out, say, what all the open Tkinter bugs are.

    2. If it's a minor feature request that you don't plan to address
       right away, add it to PEP 42[2] or ask the owner to add it for
       you.  If you add the bug to PEP 42, mark the bug as "feature
       request", "later", and "closed"; and add a comment to the bug
       saying that this is the case (mentioning the PEP explicitly).

    3. Assign the bug a reasonable priority.  We don't yet have a
       clear sense of what each priority should mean, except than 9 is
       highest and 1 is lowest.  One rule, however, is that bugs with
       priority seven or higher must be fixed before the next release.

    4. If a bug report doesn't have enough information to allow you to
       reproduce or diagnose it, send email to the original submittor
       and ask for more information.  If the original report is really
       thin and your email doesn't get a response after a reasonable
       waiting period, you can close the bug.

    5. If you fix a bug, mark the status as "Fixed" and close it.  In
       the comments, including the CVS revision numbers of the
       affected files.  In the CVS checkin message, include the
       SourceForge bug number *and* a normal description of the
       change.

    6. If you are assigned a bug that you are unable to deal with
       assign it to someone else.  The guys at PythonLabs get paid to
       fix these bugs, so pick one of them if there is no other
       obvious candidate.


References

    [1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/python
    [2] pep-0042.txt