The query page is broken down into the following sections:
Bug Settings People Involved Text Search Options Module Options Advanced Querying The Bottom Of The Form
"I already know how to use Bugzilla, but would like information about Bugzilla and the author of this document." "Ok, I am almost certain the bug I discovered isn't in Bugzilla, how do I submit the bug?" - Read the guidelines first!
Back to the Query. If you typed anything in the forms already, you might want to hit back on the browser. When you are all done reading, do a sample query!
Status
Resolution
The resolution field indicates what happened to this bug.
No resolution yet: All bugs which are in one of the "open" states (meaning the state has no associated resolution) have the resolution set to blank. All other bugs will be marked with one of the following resolutions.
Platform
The platform field is the hardware platform against which the bug was reported. Legal platforms include but are not limited to:
Note: Selecting the option "All" does not select bugs assigned against all platforms. It merely selects bugs that occur on all platforms.
Operating System
The operating system field is the operating system against which the bug was reported. Legal operating systems include but are not limited to:
Note that the operating system implies the platform, but not always. For example, Linux can run on PC and Macintosh and others.
Priority
The priority field describes the importance and order in which a bug should be fixed. This field is utilized by the programmers/engineers to prioritize their work. The priorities are from P1 (Most important) to P5 (Least important).
Severity
The Severity field describes the impact of a bug.
To search for bugs associated with an email address:
You can look for up to two different email addresses. If you specify both, then only bugs which match both emails will show up. This is useful to find bugs that were, for example, created by Ralph and assigned to Fred.
You can also use the drop down menus to specify whether you want to match addresses by doing a substring match, by using Regular Expressions, or by exactly matching a fully specified email address.
In this section, you can enter values that are searched for in all the bugs (or whatever you limit the bugs to in other fields). You might want to look at Bugzilla Text Searching to see info on Regular Expressions and text searching. The box next to these fields decides how a match will be determined.
This lets you search the summaries. The summary is one line that attempts to sum up the bug.
This lets you search comments. Comments can be added by anybody. Comments are the largest searchable area in most bugs. If you really want to find a lot of matches, search the comments. Note:Because comments can get quite extensive in bugs, doing this particular type of query can take a long time.
This lets you search the url field. This contains the url of the web page the bug is about.
This lets you search the bug's status whiteboard. The status whiteboard contains general information that engineers add.
Module options are where you select what product, module and version the bugs you want to find describe. Selecting one or more of the products, versions, components, or milestones will limit your search.
Although all subprojects within the Mozilla project are similar, there are several seperate products being developed. Each product has its own components.
This is simply the version that the bugs you want to find are marked for. Many of the bugs will be marked for another version and will have their milestones entered instead (milestones explained below).
Each product has components, against which bugs can be filed. Components are parts of the product, and are assigned to a module owner. The following lists components and their associated products:
Choosing this section lets you search through bugs that have their target milestones set to certain values. Milestones are kind of like versions. They are specific tentative dates where a massive phasing out of bugs occur and a relatively stable release is produced. For example, Mozilla.org had milestones in the form of "M10" or "M18", but now are in the form of "Mozilla0.9". Bugzilla milestones are in the form of "Bugzilla 2.12", "Bugzilla 2.14", etc.
Inclusion/Exclusion options is a powerful section that gives you the ability to include and exclude bugs based on values you enter.
[Only, Exclude] bugs numbered [text]
This lets you put in a comma-delimited list of bugs you want to have your results chosen from, or those of which you want to exclude. It would be nice in the future if you could type in ranges, i.e. [1-1000] for 1 to 1000. Unfortunately, you cannot do that as of now.
Changed in the last [text] days
Lets you specify how many days ago - at maximum - a bug could have changed state.
At least [text] votes
With this, you can choose how many votes - at minimum - a bug has.
Where the field(s) [fields] changed to [text]
With this, you can specify values to search for in fields that exist in the bug If you choose one or more fields, you have to fill out one of the fields to the right. It might be difficult to figure out what these fields mean if you are a newbie to the query. They match various fields within the bug information. Optionally, you can also enter what value you want the field to have changed to if you only entered one field. For instance, if the bug changed who it was assigned to from jon@netscape.com to brian@netscape.com , you could enter in assigned_to changed to brian@netscape.com.
During dates [text] to [text]
Here, you can choose what dates the fields changed. "Now" can be used as an entry. Other entries should be in mm/dd/yyyy or yyyy-mm-dd format.
The Bugzilla query page is designed to be reasonably easy to use. But, with such ease of use always comes some lack of power. The Advanced Querying section is designed to let you do very powerful queries, but it's not the easiest thing to learn (or explain).
The Advanced Query (or Boolean Chart) starts with a single "term". A term is a combination of two pulldown menus and a text field. You choose items from the menus, specifying:
Field 1: Where to look for the search term Field 2: How to determine what is a match Field 3: What the search term is
The real fun starts when you click on the "Or" or "And" buttons. If you push the "Or" button, then you get a second term right under the first one. You can then configure that term, and the result of the query will be anything that matches either of the terms.
You can push the "And" button, and get a new term below the original one - seperated by the word "AND", and now the result of the query will be anything that matches both sets of terms.
You can keep clicking "And" and "Or", and get a page with many terms. "Or" has higher precedence than "And". You can think of the lines of "Or" as having parenthesis around them.
The most subtle thing to notice is the "Add another boolean chart" button. This is almost the same thing as the "And" button. You want to use this when you use one of the fields where several items can be associated with a single bug - including: "Comments", "CC", and all the "changed [something]" entries. If you have multiple terms that all are about one of these fields (such as one comment), it's ambiguous whether they are allowed to be about different instances of that field or about only that one instance. So, to let you have it both ways, they always mean the same instance, unless the terms appear on different charts.
For example: if you search for "priority changed to P5" and "priority changed by person@addr", it will only find bugs where the given person at some time changed the priority to P5. However, if what you really want is to find all bugs where the milestone was changed at some time by the person, and someone (possibly someone else) at some time changed the milestone to P5, then you would put the two terms in two different charts.
So you have gotten all that down, but "What is this junk at the bottom of the form?" You can remember the current query as the default query page that is pulled up whenever you are logged on. There is also an ability to choose how you want your results sorted. When finished, click "Submit".
Written and adapted from some older Bugzilla documents (by Terry Weissman, Tara Hernandez and others) by Brian Bober You can talk to me on irc.mozilla.org - #mozilla, #mozwebtools, #mozillazine, I go by the name netdemon.
Lots of Bugzilla use documention is available through Mozilla.org and other sites: How To Find Previously Reported Bugs Bugzilla General Information Mozilla Bug Report Form Bugzilla Text Searching The Bug Reporting Guidelines
My main motive for writing this was to help the engineers by giving new Bugzilla users a way to learn how to use the Bugzilla Query form. I had done a rewrite of query.cgi, so I said, "What the heck, I'll write this too".
You probably looked at the Query page and said, "This page looks too difficult. Now that I think about it, I don't really need to do a query". It is important to make sure that a bug doesn't have a duplicate before submitting it, as is stated clearly in The Bug Reporting Guidelines. The people reading your bugs are busy and usually swamped with bugs. Therefore, you are doing everyone a huge favor to search for a duplicate.
Ok. So lets find a bug! We'll borrow the Mozilla.org database because it's handy. First, lets make a copy of the query window so you can easily switch between this document and the query.
Do the following:
One of the results should have been bug 22775 - [RFE] AutoScroll/Panning support...