About bug reports

[fbennett]

I have posted the following note to the CSL discussion list, concerning changes to the workflow for processing bug reports against citeproc-js. I should add a note on triage here. The new policy (of asking for tests to support bug reports) applies to bugs affecting third-party clients. I am of course directly more engaged with work to improve legal and multilingual referencing for use in Jurism.

The workflow for bug fixes against the citeproc-js processor has been: for me to receive fault reports through some channel, confirm the details, reproduce the fault in one or more text fixtures, fix the bug, release the revised processor, and push the tests to the standard test suite, which has slowly grown to 870-odd fixtures, with 550 fixtures in a separate collection specific to citeproc-js.

Drafting processor test fixtures has not gotten any less tedious or time-consuming, but with the deployment of citeproc-test-runner, the setup for other folks to run tests in a clone of the citeproc-js repository has been greatly simplified.

In light of the above, and in view of the general stability of the processor, I'll be making a few changes to conserve time for other tasks. Processor release 1.2.11 will be the last that follows the workflow described above. I will ask that future bug reports (including previously mentioned items such as this or this) be supported by tests that reproduce the reported fault, with a record of the expected result. Fixtures should be submitted as pull requests against the test suite, and related discussion should take place on the test suite tracker.

FB