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Bugzfeed: Bugzilla push notifications
A large number of external applications have grown up around Bugzilla serving a variety of purposes. One thing many of these apps have in common is a need to get updates from Bugzilla. Unfortunately, the only way to get notifications of changes was, until recently, to poll Bugzilla. Everyone knows that polling is bad, particularly because it doesn’t scale well, but until recently there was no alternative. Thus I would like to introduce to the world Bugzfeed, a WebSocket app that allows you to subscribe to one or more bugs and get pushed notifications when they change.Moving Bugzilla from Bazaar to Git
Or, how to migrate to git using only three programming languages Another aspect of Bugzilla has been dragged, kicking & screaming, into the future! On March 11, 2014, the Bugzilla source moved to git.mozilla.org. We’re still mirroring to bzr.mozilla.org (more on that later), but the repository of record is now git, meaning it is the only place we accept new code. Getting over there was no small feat, so I want to record the adventure in the hopes that it can benefit someone else, and so I can look back some day and wonder why I put myself through these things.BzAPI App Author?
Have you written an app or system of some sort which uses the Bugzilla REST API (BzAPI)? If so, please do as the docs have long recommended and make sure you are a member of the mozilla.tools discussion forum. There are several upcoming announcements in the next few weeks and months which you will need to be aware of, and that is where they are going to be posted.
Bugzilla 1,000,000 Bug Sweepstake
[Note: The closing date for entries was midday ZST on Thursday 5th September 2013, i.e. a long time ago :-).]
Some of you may have noticed that, after a long history of contests, there was no competition to predict the time of arrival of the 900,000th bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org. This was because we were preparing for the big 1M.
Now we are over 9000,00 (can that really be right?), I can reveal that the prize for the Millionth Bug Sweepstake will be the top-of-the-range Most Splendid Package from the Mozilla Gear Store, which includes a black hoodie, a drawstring tote bag, a Moleskine notebook, and a Rickshaw laptop bag, all Firefox or Mozilla-branded.
The aim of the contest is simple – you need your guess to be the closest to the actual filing date of the one millionth bug in our Bugzilla installation.
To enter, email me a plain text email at gerv@mozilla.org, ideally using this link, filling in the date and time you think the one millionth bug will be filed, along with your Bugzilla ID or email address. As the link suggests, your entry should be on the first line of your email, and formatted as follows:
2010-09-08 06:54:32 bugzilla-id@example.com
All times are in ZST (‘Zilla Standard Time, a.k.a. Pacific Time, as displayed in Bugzilla timestamps unless you’ve changed a pref). If you prefer to be contacted on a different address, add that as well, in brackets on the end of the same line. We have ample graphs and charts (requires editbugs) to help you with your assessment. But if you can’t be bothered to do any research and analysis, just guess optimistically and hope!
This is a Mozilla community event. To keep it that way, entrants must have either a Bugzilla account on bugzilla.mozilla.org created before the end of July 2013, and which has done something useful in the past six months, or a Mozillians account vouched for before the same date. Anyone who meets those criteria can (and is encouraged to) enter, including Mozilla employees. Once the bug is filed, I’ll check those entries who are closest, and keep discarding them until I find one which meets these criteria. Therefore, there’s no point posting this to Slashdot or any other non-Mozilla-focussed news source. But please do post it in Mozilla news sources!
Badly-formatted entries may be discarded. The judge’s decision is final, and any funny business regarding the filing of bugs on or around the one million mark will be frowned upon. The closing date for entries is midday ZST on Thursday 5th September 2013.
Bugzilla API 1.3 Released
I am proud to announce the release of version 1.3 of the Bugzilla REST API. This maintenance release has a bug fix or two, and fully supports the version of Bugzilla 4.2 which has just been deployed on bugzilla.mozilla.org. For smooth interaction with BMO, you should be using this version.
The installation of BzAPI 1.1 on api-dev.bugzilla.mozilla.org will go away in 4 weeks, on 4th April. There is a limit to the number of old versions we can support on the server, particularly as the older ones can put a larger load on Bugzilla and may not work correctly. Please use either the /1.3 or the /latest endpoints. Now that BzAPI has been stable for some time, tools which earlier rejected using the /latest endpoint may want to reconsider.
Persona Login Now Fully Enabled On bugzilla.mozilla.org
[Update 2013-01-23 18:35 GMT – turns out there are a couple of Persona features we still need to be absolutely certain that this is a good thing. The change has been reverted until we’ve got those. Sorry for any confusion.]
In April last year, we enabled Persona logins on bugzilla.mozilla.org using a Bugzilla extension I wrote. However, we restricted this login method to low-privilege accounts only while Persona and the extension both matured.
I’m pleased to say that, as of now, unless you are a member of the administrative Bugzilla groups “admin”, “editusers” or “editgroups”, or the “legal” group, then you can now use Persona to log in to bugzilla.mozilla.org :-) In particular, this means all Mozilla employees and security group members can now log in this way.
Make sure you use the correct email address; if you pick a different one to your usual one, Bugzilla will auto-create a Bugzilla account for it.
If for some reason you want b.m.o. not to accept Persona logins for your account, you can do so; file a bug to have your account manually added back to the “no-browser-id” group.
Support for bugzilla.mozilla.org Users
BMO is a core tool in the Mozilla project. There is now a shared, curated space for people’s tips, ideas, best practices, FAQs and so on relating specifically to BMO: https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/Support.
This includes Things Every BMO User Really Should Do, and a BMO FAQ (currently in its infancy).
Suggestions for additional content would be very welcome.
Quicksearch Reference
“Quicksearch” is a way of searching Bugzilla using simple yet powerful syntax. The search box at the top of every page supports it.
Jesse Ruderman has written a wonderful Quicksearch Reference – a must-read if you search Bugzilla a lot.
Even Faster Quicksearches
To speed up quicksearches, limit the search by product or component. Add “comp: <string>” to your query to limit it to components whose names contain that string. As an abbreviation, you can simply use “:” instead of “comp:”, although that also searches in products whose names which contain the string.
By analogy with the use of “:”, there are abbreviations for some other common fields as well.
(Thanks to Ben Hearsum and Ed Morley)
Faster Quicksearches
Another guest post from Stefan Arentz:
“If you do a lot of quick searches to find bugs by summary and you don’t care about also looking into the comments of those bugs, flip the “Include comments when performing quick searches (slower)” to NO in your preferences.
A search for ‘radio antenna’ just went down from 30+ seconds to just a few seconds.”