Bugzilla

Last updated
Bugzilla
Original author(s) Terry Weissman
Developer(s) Mozilla Foundation
Initial releaseAugust 26, 1998;26 years ago (1998-08-26) [1]
Stable release
5.2 (September 3, 2024;2 months ago (2024-09-03) [2] ) [±]

4.4.14 (September 3, 2024;2 months ago (2024-09-03) [2] ) [±]

Contents

Preview release 5.9.1 (September 3, 2024;2 months ago (2024-09-03) [3] ) [±]
Repository
Written in Perl
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in Multiple languages
Type Bug tracking system
License Mozilla Public License
Website www.bugzilla.org

Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracking system and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License.

Released as open-source software by Netscape Communications in 1998, it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Bugzilla is used, among others, by the Mozilla Foundation, WebKit, Linux kernel, FreeBSD, [4] KDE, Apache, Eclipse and LibreOffice. [5] Red Hat uses it, but is gradually migrating its product to use Jira. [6] [7] It is also self-hosting. [8]

History

Bugzilla was originally devised by Terry Weissman in 1998 for the nascent Mozilla.org project, as an open source application to replace the in-house system then in use at Netscape Communications for tracking defects in the Netscape Communicator suite. Bugzilla was originally written in Tcl, but Weissman decided to port it to Perl before its release as part of Netscape's early open-source code drops, in the hope that more people would be able to contribute to it, given that Perl seemed to be a more popular language at the time. [9]

Bugzilla 2.0 was the result of that port to Perl, and the first version was released to the public via anonymous CVS. In April 2000, Weissman handed over control of the Bugzilla project to Tara Hernandez. Under her leadership, some of the regular contributors were coerced into taking more responsibility, and Bugzilla development became more community-driven. In July 2001, facing distraction from her other responsibilities in Netscape, Hernandez handed control to Dave Miller, who was still in charge as of 2020. [10]

Bugzilla 3.0 was released on May 10, 2007, and brought a refreshed UI, an XML-RPC interface, custom fields and resolutions, mod_perl support, shared saved searches, and improved UTF-8 support, along with other changes.

Bugzilla 4.0 was released on February 15, 2011, and Bugzilla 5.0 was released in July 2015.

Timeline

Bugzilla's release timeline: [11]

Bugzilla

Requirements

Bugzilla's system requirements include:

Currently supported database systems are MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQLite. [12] Bugzilla is usually installed on Linux using the Apache HTTP Server, but any web server that supports CGI such as Lighttpd, Hiawatha, Cherokee can be used. Bugzilla's installation process is command line driven and runs through a series of stages where system requirements and software capabilities are checked.

Design

The life cycle of a Bugzilla bug Bugzilla Lifecycle color-aqua.svg
The life cycle of a Bugzilla bug

While the potential exists in the code to turn Bugzilla into a technical support ticket system, task management tool, or project management tool, Bugzilla's developers have chosen to focus on the task of designing a system to track software defects.

Zarro Boogs

Bugzilla returns the string "zarro boogs found" instead of "0 bugs found" when a search for bugs returns no results. [13] "Zarro Boogs" is intended as a 'buggy' statement itself (a misspelling of "zero bugs") [13] [14] and is thus a meta-statement about the nature of software debugging, implying that even when no bugs have been identified, some may exist.

The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour:

Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry Weissman had the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this ... way back when, when Netscape released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh. So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
— Terry Weissman
From The Bugzilla Guide – 2.16.10 Release: Glossary [15]

WONTFIX

WONTFIX is used as a label on issues in Bugzilla and other systems. [16] It indicates that a verified issue will not be addressed for one of several possible reasons including fixing would be too expensive, complicated or risky. [17] [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MySQL</span> SQL database engine software

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database organizes data into one or more data tables in which data may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language that programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups.

Netscape Communications Corporation was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SQLite</span> Serverless relational database management system (RDBMS)

SQLite is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the most widely deployed database engine, as it is used by several of the top web browsers, operating systems, mobile phones, and other embedded systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firebird (database server)</span> Relational database management system

Firebird is an open-source SQL relational database management system that supports Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS and other Unix platforms. The database forked from Borland's open source edition of InterBase in 2000 but the code has been largely rewritten since Firebird 1.5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FOSDEM</span> Annual event in Brussels centered on free and open source software development

Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software.

This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Application Suite</span> Discontinued Internet suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It was based on the source code of Netscape Communicator. The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation from 2003 to 2006.

The Mozilla application framework is a collection of cross-platform software components that make up the Mozilla applications. It was originally known as XPFE, an abbreviation of cross-platform front end. It was also known as XPToolkit. To avoid confusion, it is now referred to as the Mozilla application framework.

Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g. dual-licensed for software licensed under two different licenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catalyst (software)</span> Open-source web application framework

Catalyst is an open-source web application framework written in Perl. It closely follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture and supports a number of experimental web patterns. It is written using Moose, a modern object system for Perl. Its design is heavily inspired by frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Maypole, and Spring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crash reporter</span> System software that identify and report crash details

A crash reporter is usually a system software whose function is to identify reporting crash details and to alert when there are crashes, in production or on development / testing environments. Crash reports often include data such as stack traces, type of crash, trends and version of software. These reports help software developers- Web, SAAS, mobile apps and more, to diagnose and fix the underlying problem causing the crashes. Crash reports may contain sensitive information such as passwords, email addresses, and contact information, and so have become objects of interest for researchers in the field of computer security.

Notable issue tracking systems, including bug tracking systems, help desk and service desk issue tracking systems, as well as asset management systems, include the following. The comparison includes client-server application, distributed and hosted systems.

GNATS is the GNU project's issue-tracking software.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foswiki</span> Enterprise wiki

Foswiki is an enterprise wiki, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge base or document management system. Users can create wiki applications using the Topic Markup Language (TML), and developers can extend its functionality with plugins.

Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to MySQL:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tara Hernandez</span> Software developer and open source contributor

Tara Hernandez is a professional software developer, and veteran open source contributor, who developed procedures and tools at several Silicon Valley companies. She was an early promoter of what came to be known as the Continuous Integration revolution. As shown in the documentary Code Rush, she was the manager of Netscape Navigator development at Netscape Communications Corporations, and worked on the preparation of the original Mozilla code for public release, which led to the development of the Firefox browser. She has also worked as a Release Team Manager at Blue Martini software, Senior Infrastructure Engineer and Team Lead at Pixar Animation Studios, Senior Engineering Manager at Lithium Technologies, Senior Director of Systems and Build Engineering at Linden Lab, and worked as a Senior Engineering Manager at Google. Tara is currently employed by MongoDB as Vice President of R&D Productivity, where her role is to lead the development of engineering CI/CD systems, builds of various MongoDB software on 40+ platforms, and the performance tooling team.

References

  1. ↑ "New version of "Bugzilla" (the mozilla.org bugsystem) – with source!". netscape.public.mozilla.announce. Retrieved 2011-01-28.
  2. 1 2 "[ 2024 Sep 03 ] Release Information". 2024-09-03. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  3. ↑ "[ 2024 Sep 3 ] Release of Bugzilla 5.1.2, 5.0.4, and 4.4.13". 2024-09-03. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  4. ↑ "Announcement of Migration from GNATS to Bugzilla on the FreeBSD mailing list". 3 June 2014. 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.
  5. ↑ "Installation List". bugzilla.org.
  6. ↑ "[CentOS-devel] RHEL moving to issues.redhat.com only long term" . Retrieved 2022-04-19.
  7. ↑ "CentOS Community Newsletter, April 2022 – Blog.CentOS.org" . Retrieved 2022-04-19.
  8. ↑ "Reporting Bugs". Bugzilla. 31 December 2014. Retrieved 9 January 2014.
  9. ↑ "Brief History". Development Roadmap. Mozilla.org. Retrieved 2006-11-22.
  10. ↑ "Developer Profiles". Bugzilla Website. Mozilla.org. Retrieved 2013-07-02.
  11. ↑ "Release Dates". Release Information. Mozilla.org. Retrieved 2011-03-31.
  12. ↑ "3.6.1. MySQL — Bugzilla 5.2 documentation". bugzilla.readthedocs.io. Retrieved 2024-05-13.
  13. 1 2 "Bugzilla Guide glossary entry for Zarro Boogs Found". Glossary. Bugzilla.org. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
  14. ↑ Coined by Michael Toy as explained by Tara Hernandez in the PBS documentary Code Rush . Event occurs at 18:21.
  15. ↑ "Glossary". www.bugzilla.org.
  16. ↑ "Bug Status WONTFIX - openSUSE". en.opensuse.org. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  17. ↑ "What to do and what not to do in Bugzilla". Archived from the original on 2018-06-29. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
  18. ↑ "Bug Status WONTFIX". Archived from the original on 2018-06-29. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.