[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD bug tracking moves from GNATS to Bugzilla

[David Chisnall]

We are pleased to announce that the FreeBSD project has begin the
transition from the GNATS bug-tracking system to Bugzilla.  The
Bugzilla installation can be found here:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/

This process is expected to cause some disruption, but comes with
several benefits.  Bugzilla, unlike GNATS, is actively maintained and
is used by a number of other projects of similar size and scope to
FreeBSD.  We hope that users will be familiar with it from other
projects and so not have to learn yet another bug-tracking system to
file bugs with FreeBSD.

Bugzilla supports finer granularity for categories and keywords and
over time we will adopt more of these, making it easier to filter bugs
into specific target areas.  It is now easy for multiple people to
track a single bug, without having to have them assigned to custom
mailing lists, add attachments to bugs, and so on.  Many features that
people expect from a modern bug tracker are simply not present in
GNATS.

The Bugzilla migration comes with several changes to the workflow,
illustrated in this state transition diagram:

http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/bugrelocation/workflow.html

All of the interaction with the bug tracker can now happen via the web
interface. The send-pr script will continue functioning as a
compatibility interface, but it is not guaranteed to run in a timely
fashion (currently, importing bugs submitted via send-pr involves a
manual step).  In addition, there are command line tools available in
the devel/pybugz package.

Going forward, Bugzilla is a more modern platform for integrating with
other tools, for example code review systems.  This should allow us to
improve the workflow for both regular FreeBSD committers and other
contributors.

Please be warned that there is likely to be some disruption during
this process.  If you find any specific problems, please file a bug in
Bugzilla (now that the search function works well, you can also easily
check for duplicates before you file a new issue).  If the issue that
you encounter is that you can't file bugs, then please send an email
to bugmeister at FreeBSD.org.

On behalf of Core any myself, many thanks to the people who made this 
possible.  Please be nice to them, they haven't had much sleep 
recently...

David