This is a guide to using Jira effectively for Apache CloudStack development. This is best practices that we want all contributors to Apache CloudStack to follow. If something is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask on the cloudstack-dev mailing list and/or in the #cloudstack-dev IRC channel on Freenode. (However, please don't uncertainty stop you from filing a bug if you have one – better to file a bug and edit later than to drop it on the floor!)
Jira is one of the tools that all CloudStack contributors and users depend on to understand the state of the code for released and unreleased versions of the software. While the -dev mailing list is the best place to have discussions about CloudStack development, it's a poor mechanism for tracking work in progress, claiming issues to work on, or assessing/triaging work that needs to be done.
You should file a Jira ticket for:
Note that you should (almost) never commit a patch without an accompanying Jira ticket, with some minor exceptions:
First and foremost, put yourself in the place of someone else trying to solve the issue based on information in the Jira ticket alone. That means put as much information as you can into the ticket so that the next person can work the issue without having to follow up. Even if the ticket is for an issue you plan to work yourself, the more information provided, the better.
The information in Jira tickets is not only used to fix a specific bug. It is also used for:
Jira tickets without a comprehensive description (e.g. Summary only with no text in the Description field) are not acceptable.
When creating a new Jira ticket, please take a minute to correctly assess the priority of the issue. By default, Jira assigns a new issue a Priority level of Major. In many cases, this is wrong. Please be sure to set the Priority correctly:
If you run into an issue with a CloudStack release, please make sure you note which version of CloudStack is affected by the bug. If possible, see if the issue is likely to affect prior/upcoming releases of CloudStack as well.
Once a ticket has been created and assigned, if you're working a ticket there are a few things to keep in mind.