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Bug verification is an ideal way to get involved with Flock. When you verify a bug, you're providing the final word on whether a Flock developer fixed that bug correctly or not.
Sometimes, the developer may have missed a small detail, or even broken something else while fixing the bug. And sometimes, the developer just misunderstood the bug. One industry statistic suggests that as many as 20 percent of fixed bugs aren't fixed correctly. That's why at Flock, we only consider a bug truly fixed after a tester has verified the fix.
Bug verification is a great way to become acquainted with open source projects and software development. You don't have to program, you can do as much (or as little) as you want, and you have the opportunity to exercise your creativity and ingenuity. In fact, it's one of the ways Blake Ross (who later co-created Firefox) originally became involved with Mozilla.
And that's where you, too, can come in.
To get started verifying a bug, you'll first need the most recent (topmost) testing build of Flock. Download it here.
Then, search Bugzilla for a bug that you think you can verify: List of fixed bugs needing verification
How do you know which bug to verify? Pick one that you understand - many bugs include step-by-step instructions so you can reproduce the problem. Other Flock bugs were written by developers exclusively for other developers. Those often don't make much sense to anyone else but the author and their immediate peers.
Then, you can verify it by asking these four questions:
After you've done those four steps, you probably know whether the bug is fixed or not. Here's what to do if you think it's fixed -- or what to do if you see a problem.
Here's how bug #2553 was marked verified:
------- Comment #2 From Eli Goldberg 2006-02-17 17:29 -8 [reply] ------- Verified fixed in: - Mac OS 10.3.9 (build 1140168879) - Windows XP SP2 (build 1140168133) The tagbox now has borders. I note that the tagbox's right edge is misaligned with the right edges of the other fields, and will file a separate trivial bug on that.
Here's how bug #2137 was marked re-opened:
------- Comment #8 From Eli Goldberg 2006-02-10 14:31 -8 [reply] ------- Re-opened. Although this looked OK on Mac build #1139597054 (only checked Find and Select All in the Favorites Manager), it does not appear fixed on Windows build #1139595624. Specifically, on Windows, neither Cntl+F or Cntl+A had any effect when opening the Favorites Manager unless I placed focus explicitly.
If you found corner cases or other side-issues, submit new bug reports, and mention their bug numbers in the bug you're verifying. Otherwise, you may "morph" critical bugs into trivial or entirely unrelated issues.
After you've verified a few bugs and have earned our trust, a Flock tester will upgrade your Bugzilla account. With this upgrade, you'll be able to change the bug's status in the Bugzilla database to "Verified" or "Re-opened". Until then, a Flock tester will see your comments in the bug and change the status for you.
If you had problems or would like to talk, visit the team in our IRC chat room, (#flock-dev on irc.flock.com), or ask on the Flock-QA email list.