In a future Launchpad release, projects and distributions will have the option of automatically expiring old, unattended bugs that have the "Incomplete" status.

Although this feature is not yet active, you now have two ways to see which bugs would be expired:

• a report accessible from project and distribution bug overview pages
• a notice on the candidate bug report itself.

Using these, you'll be able to see which bugs would be expiry candidates if the feature were active.

Old, unattended and incomplete?

Launchpad will mark bugs as candidates for expiry if it appears that they have been abandoned. To determine if a bug has been abandoned, Launchpad uses the following conditions:

• it has the "Incomplete" status
• there is at least one comment - assumed to be a request for more information
• the last update was more than 60 days ago
• is is not marked as a duplicate of another bug
• it has not been assigned to anyone
• it is not targeted to a milestone.

Only projects and distributions that use Launchpad as their bug tracker and that have not disabled bug expiry are part of the bug expiration process.

Bugs watched in external trackers are never candidates for expiry.

Bugs that affect several projects

Bugs tracked in Launchpad can affect several communities (projects or distributions) and each community has its own status for that bug.

Launchpad will consider these bugs for expiry only in those instances where the project or distribution has not disabled bug expiry. However, the bug will be removed entirely from the bug expiry process as soon as one of those communities marks it as confirmed.