JIRA 'Resolved' vs 'Closed' (Re: JIRA question)

[Jeff Turner <je...@apache.org>]

(Cc'ing infrastructure@ since this is cross-project)

On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 05:52:48PM -0700, Craig L Russell wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
> 
> I'm the technical lead for the Apache JDO project. I've been a JIRA  
> user for about a year now and I still don't know some of the basics.  
> Like, what is accepted practice for closing JIRA issues (one step  
> beyond resolving the issue). I've seen a number of practices, but is  
> there a documented "best practice" for this?

No, it's pretty much up to the project.

Technically, the difference between Resolved and Closed is that Closed
issues cannot be edited (by default).  Not being able to edit is of often
annoying, so I usually just 'resolve' issues.

If the resolved/closed distinction is not used, and only confuses people,
we should get rid of one of them. Feel free to customize the JDO
workflow, eg. to eliminate 'Resolved':

http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/latest/workflow.html

For example, Cocoon have a custom workflow:

Open -> On Hold <-> Continued -> Closed <-> Reopened

If you like you could even have different workflows for different issue
types, eg. add a "Confirmed" step to the Bug workflow.


--Jeff

> Thanks,
> 
> Craig

Re: JIRA 'Resolved' vs 'Closed' (Re: JIRA question)

[Doug Cutting <cu...@apache.org>]

Jeff Turner wrote:
>>Like, what is accepted practice for closing JIRA issues (one step  
>>beyond resolving the issue). I've seen a number of practices, but is  
>>there a documented "best practice" for this?
> 
> No, it's pretty much up to the project.
> 
> Technically, the difference between Resolved and Closed is that Closed
> issues cannot be edited (by default).  Not being able to edit is of often
> annoying, so I usually just 'resolve' issues.

In Hadoop we close issues when a release is made.  This makes Jira's 
"Change Log" feature work better, since folks shouldn't generally change 
an issue after it has been released, as that will alter the release's 
change log, which should be read-only.  We encourage folks to not 
re-open closed bugs but instead to create new bugs referencing closed 
bugs that can be tracked in an upcoming release.  Perhaps we should even 
alter the workflow so that closed issues cannot be re-opened.

I think classically the distinction between "resolved" and "closed" is 
for projects with formal QA processes.  Developers resolve bugs and then 
testers close them once they've independently verified the fix.

Doug

Re: JIRA 'Resolved' vs 'Closed' (Re: JIRA question)

[Craig L Russell <Cr...@Sun.COM>]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the advice. It's good to know that there is no best  
practice, so we haven't been violating it. We will have to take a  
look at what it means in terms of the project. I'm thinking that it's  
perhaps useful to get rid of "closed" because once a bug is fixed, it  
might be ported to multiple releases which would mean adding a "fixed  
in" to the bug. And if it's immutable due to being closed, then it  
would have to be reopened which is just more work.

But then I have to ask if any of the standard reporting tools (e.g.  
release notes) depend on a bug being in some specific status in order  
to be picked up. We wrote some filters that work pretty well but  
these can always be customized.

Craig

On May 30, 2006, at 7:32 PM, Jeff Turner wrote:

> (Cc'ing infrastructure@ since this is cross-project)
>
> On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 05:52:48PM -0700, Craig L Russell wrote:
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> I'm the technical lead for the Apache JDO project. I've been a JIRA
>> user for about a year now and I still don't know some of the basics.
>> Like, what is accepted practice for closing JIRA issues (one step
>> beyond resolving the issue). I've seen a number of practices, but is
>> there a documented "best practice" for this?
>
> No, it's pretty much up to the project.
>
> Technically, the difference between Resolved and Closed is that Closed
> issues cannot be edited (by default).  Not being able to edit is of  
> often
> annoying, so I usually just 'resolve' issues.
>
> If the resolved/closed distinction is not used, and only confuses  
> people,
> we should get rid of one of them. Feel free to customize the JDO
> workflow, eg. to eliminate 'Resolved':
>
> http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/latest/workflow.html
>
> For example, Cocoon have a custom workflow:
>
> Open -> On Hold <-> Continued -> Closed <-> Reopened
>
> If you like you could even have different workflows for different  
> issue
> types, eg. add a "Confirmed" step to the Bug workflow.
>
>
> --Jeff
>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Craig

Craig Russell
Architect, Sun Java Enterprise System http://java.sun.com/products/jdo
408 276-5638 mailto:Craig.Russell@sun.com
P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!