a common problem with bugzilla emails (aka bugmail) is there’s too much of it. if you are involved in a bug or watching a component you receive all changes made to bugs, even those you have no interest in receiving.
earlier this week we pushed a new feature to bugzilla.mozilla.org : bugmail filtering.
this feature is available on the “bugmail filtering“ tab on the “user preference” page.
there are many reasons why bugzilla may send you notification of a change to a bug:
- you reported the bug
- the bug is assigned to you
- you are the qa-contact for the bug
- you are on the cc list
- you are watching the bug’s product/component
- you are watching another user who received notification of the bug
- you are a “global watcher”
dealing with all that bugmail can be time consuming. one way address this issue is to use the x-headers present in every bugmail to categorise and separate bugmail into different folders in your inbox. unfortunately this option isn’t available to everyone (eg. gmail users still cannot filter on any email header).
bugmail filtering allows you to tell bugzilla to notify you only if it’s a change that you’re interested in.
if multiple filters are applicable to the same bug change, include filters override exclude filters. this interplay allows you to write filters to express “don’t send me an email unless …”
examples:
don’t send me an email when the qa-whiteboard field is changed unless the bug is assigned to me
don’t send me an email for developer tools bugs that i’m CC’ed on unless the bug’s status is changed
- exclude all developer tools emails:
- then override the exclusion with an inclusion for just the status changes
