fixVersion recommendation for JIRA

[Christopher <ct...@apache.org>]

To reduce ambiguity for users when one is trying to determine whether
a bug has been fixed in any given version, I propose it be common
practice to specify the next major release version, in addition to the
next bugfix version, for the "fixVersion" field in JIRA.

Example:

Accumulo 1.6.0 may be released before Accumulo 1.5.1, so a ticket
marked only with a fixVersion of 1.5.1 is ambiguous. One cannot easily
determine if the bug still affects 1.6.0.

If one specifies both 1.5.1 and 1.6.0, it is not ambiguous. One does
not need to continue to specify future major releases, because major
releases only occur in chronological order.

So, it would not be necessary to put something like: 1.5.6, 1.6.0, 1.7.0
I can easily infer that the bug was fixed in 1.7.0 if it is marked as
fixed for 1.6.0. Further, I can tell that it was either backported or
initially fixed in 1.5.6.

But it would be helpful if, I saw something like: 1.5.6, 1.6.2, 1.7.0
This would clarify that the earliest version of 1.5 with the fix was
1.5.6, and the earliest version of 1.6 that had the fix was 1.6.2, and
that all versions 1.7.0 and later were either fixed or it doesn't
apply to those versions.

--
Christopher L Tubbs II
http://gravatar.com/ctubbsii