3. What Happens to a Bug Report after you Submit it

3. What Happens to a Bug Report after you Submit it
	Appendix B. Reporting Bugs and Requesting Enhancements

At any time after it is submitted, a bug report has a “Status” that describes how it is currently being handled. Here are the possible values of Status and what they mean:

Unconfirmed

This is the initial status of a bug report, from the time it is submitted until one of the maintainers reads it and decides whether it is really a valid bug report. Sometimes the maintainers aren't sure, and in the meantime leave the status as “Unconfirmed”. In the worst cases, a bug report can stay unconfirmed for a year or longer, but this is considered a bad thing and does not happen very often.

New

This means that the bug report has been read by one of the maintainers, and is considered, for the moment at least, to be valid. It does not necessarily mean that anything is going to be done about it immediately: some bug reports, especially enhancement requests, may be perfectly valid and still go for a long time before anybody is able to deal with them. Many bugs, on the other hand, are fixed within hours of being reported.

Assigned

This means that a specific person has agreed to work on the bug. It does not, this world being the kind of world that it is, mean that that person will actually do anything in particular, so for practical purposes this status means nearly the same thing as “New”.

Reopened

This means that the bug report was at some point considered by the maintainers to be resolved (i.e., finished), but new information came in that caused them to change their minds: most likely, a change that was intended to fix the problem did not completely work.

Needinfo

This is a status you should pay particular attention to. It means that you did not supply enough information in your bug report to enable anything to be done about it. In most cases, no further action will be taken on the bug report until you supply additional information (by adding a comment). If too much time goes by without any input from you, the bug report will eventually be resolved as “Incomplete”.

Resolved

This means that the maintainers believe that they have finished dealing with the bug report. If you disagree, you can re-open it, but since you cannot force anybody to work on a bug against their will, you should have a good reason for doing so. Bugs can be resolved in a variety of ways. Here are the possible values of Resolution and what they mean:

Fixed: The bug report is considered valid, and GIMP has been changed in a way that is considered to fix it.
Wontfix: The maintainers agree that the bug report is valid, but it would take so much effort to fix, in relation to its importance, that it is not worth the trouble.
Duplicate: This means that the same bug has already been reported by somebody else. If you see this resolution, you will also see a pointer to the earlier bug report, which will often give you a lot of useful information.
Notabug: This means that the behavior described in the bug report is intentional. It may seem like a bug to you (and there may be many people who agree with you), but the program is working the way it was intended to work, and the developers don't want to change it.
NotGnome: The bug report is valid, but it can't be addressed by changing GIMP. Problems in operating systems, window managers, or libraries that GIMP depends on will often be given this resolution. Sometimes the next appropriate step is to file a bug report for the software that is really at fault.
Incomplete: The bug report did not contain enough information for anything to be done about it, and the reporter did not respond to requests for more information. Usually a bug report will be open for at least a month or two before it is resolved in this way.
Invalid: Something is wrong with the form of the bug report: most commonly, the reporter has accidentally submitted the same bug report multiple times. (This can easily happen by mistake with some web browsers.) Bug reports that incorrectly describe how the program behaves may also be resolved as Invalid.

	Note
	If you disagree with the resolution of a bug report, you are always free to add your comments to it. Any comment added to any bug report, resolved or not, causes email to be sent to the GIMP Bugzilla mailing list, so it will at least be seen by the maintainers. This does not, of course, mean that they will necessarily respond to it.


2. Reporting the Bug		Appendix C. GNU Free Documentation License