GHC bug sweep

The last bugsweep was performed by thomie in the fall of 2014.

In the tradition of the Ubuntu 5-a-day, the GHC Bug Sweep is a scheme in a similar vein. The main aim is simple: we want to make sure that no ticket is forgotten. So, what we plan to do is to look at every ticket in the database in sequence, starting from the oldest, and try to make some progress on the ticket. In this way we'll ensure that we keep the amount of cruft in the ticket database down to a minimum, keep the database healthy, and keep everything moving.

The bug sweep is a way that virtually anyone can contribute to GHC, in as small or large a way as you like. Whenever you have a spare minute or two, claim a ticket and look at it (see below for how to claim a ticket). You don't necessarily have to fix the bug or implement the feature: all you have to do is make some progress on the ticket. Here are some things to check:

All tickets : Check for duplicates (Google search with "site:gitlab.haskell.org" may be better than GitLab's search) Tidy up the description: add markup if necessary, link to related information and/or other tickets Check that the ticket is categorised correctly, including the title is a good summary of the bug platform/OS are correct component is correct it is on the correct milestone (developers only) the "difficulty" is a reasonable estimate (developers only) If the ticket has a patch (developers only) review the patch if it looks ready to go, add a comment to the ticket to say so.

Bugs : Check that the bug hasn't already been fixed. Set the new "Type of Failure" field If the bug has some reproduction instructions, try them out with a recent GHC and see if the bug still happens. If the results are different, update the ticket to include that information. Add the program to the testsuite. If the bug does not have repro instructions, ask the submitter for more details. Check that there is still value in having the ticket open. If we cannot make progress without feedback from the submitter, and a long time has elapsed (e.g. 6 months), then we should close the bug.

Feature requests and tasks : check that it hasn't already been done. link to related feature requests



Here are some more details on how we use the bug tracker.

Note: you don't have to do all of the things on the list. Doing any of them is good. The main thing is that every ticket gets at least looked at.

For many tickets there may be nothing to do: if so, just proceed to the next ticket. You might not be able to reproduce the bug (because you don't have access to the right platform, for instance). In that case just add a comment to the ticket to note that the bug needs to be reproduced with an up to date GHC, and hopefully someone else will pick it up.