Bug statuses and what they mean:
- Unread - no one's ever responded to this bug (bad)
- Deferred - we've decided not to deal with this problem now
- Chatting - we're discussing a solution
- Need-eg - we need more information to progress
- In-progress - a partial fix exists
- Testing - a patch is merged, but poster has not confirmed it works, or it didn't reach the main repo yet
- Done-cbb - (could be better or couldn't be bothered) not perfect, but we've done as much as we're going to do
- Resolved - problem is fixed
Priorities and what they mean:
- critical - data loss or security issue
- urgent - bug that is blocking development
- bug - bug that's not blocking development
- feature - it's not a bug, it's a feature
- wish - would be nice
Triage
Sort open issues by priority and activity - here is a [http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts/issue?@columns=title,id,activity,status,assignedto&@sort=status,activity&@group=priority&@filter=status,priority,status,priority&@pagesize=100&@startwith=0&status=-1,1,3,5&priority=1,2,3&@dispname=triage triage] and a [http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts/issue?@columns=title,id,activity,priority,status&@sort=activity&@filter=status&@pagesize=100&@startwith=0&status=-1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7&@dispname=unloved unloved] query.
- Diagnose issues and add appropriate people to the nosy list
- Merge duplicates by setting superseder in the more recent bug, copy its nosy list to the older bug, and add a pointer to the new issue in the old issue if it contains new info
- Improve bug titles to be more informative
- Add appropriate categories
- Set appropriate priorities (eg degrade urgent issues with workarounds to bug)