[Reportbug-maint] Bug#550166: reportbug: grave severity justification 'data loss' description

[green]

Thanks for the quick response!

Sandro Tosi wrote at 2009-10-08 00:30 -0500:
> Hello Green (is this your real name? it's nice to know who you're talking to),

No, 'green' is a pseudonym.  Sorry, but at least I am consistent in using it.

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 06:20, green <greenfreedom10 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Package: reportbug
> > Version: 3.48
> > Severity: normal
> >
> > The description for the 'grave' severity in reportbug should indicate that it
> > is _not_ for _serious_ data loss, like: "causes non-serious data loss".
> 
> The severities in reportbug are the ones defined[1] by the BTS, so I'm
> not going to branch from their description. If you want them to be
> changed, your should talk to BTS maintainers first, then downstream to
> us. Closing this bug report now.
> 
> [1] http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities

Ah, okay.  I see and agree that the severities are not the responsibility of 
the reportbug package.

Why, then, do the reportbug severity criteria descriptions depart from those 
listed[1] in the rc_policy document?  Is there another list?

[1] http://release.debian.org/lenny/rc_policy.txt

> > I was reporting a bug (550103) for a program that did cause data loss by not
> > writing user inputted data to the filesystem.  That data therefore becomes
> > unrecoverable--that is 'serious data loss'.  When reporting the bug, I chose
> > 'grave' because it mentioned 'data loss' and I did not feel that 'critical'
> > severity was correct because the data loss was not catastrophic.  When
> > reportbug asked for justification, the only data loss option is 'non-serious',
> > so I was forced to use 'unknown' which lowered the severity to 'normal'.  I
> > should have used 'critical' and 'causes serious data loss', hence the suggested
> > description change.
> 
> No, the correct severity is 'grave': 'critical' is far too higher for
> a program not saving its own files.

Okay, so when I run reportbug and select 'grave', then the only relevant 
criteria/justification option is 'causes non-serious data loss'.  Unrecoverable 
loss of my data is serious, but there are worse cases.  The rc_policy document 
uses a more generic 'causes data loss'.  There is no description there 
(elsewhere perhaps?), but 'unimportant or restorable without resorting to 
backup media' is NOT TRUE for the bug I was reporting.

Comments?


Possible alternatives:

2 causes data loss - causes the loss of data on the system that is only 
applicable to the package, unsaved, or restorable without resorting to 
backup media

or:

2 causes data loss - causes new, unimportant, or restorable (without backup 
media) data on the system to be lost


Thanks.
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