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Overview

Launchpad's bug tracker is unique: it can track how a bug affects various different communities.

When you share free software, you share any bugs it may have. This means that free software bugs may be reported in one project but originate in another entirely, whilst affecting several more.

Launchpad handles this by making every bug available to every project and distribution that uses the bug tracker. Rather than treating each project as an island, with an isolated list of bug reports, Launchpad allows interested groups to work together in search of a fix.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/zope3/+bug/98275 Bug 98275] is a great example. It is one bug report, with one bug number, but it has a different status, importance and assignee in each context.

This table appears at the top of the bug report, showing that it affects three projects and different series within those projects. In this case, each of the affected projects uses Launchpad's bug tracker. However, Launchpad can just as happily monitor the progress of the same bug in external trackers, as shown in [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/122590 bug 122590].

Here, the bug report in Launchpad is about Ubuntu's package of the Gnome Panel. However, it's also monitoring the bug's status in Gnome's Bugzilla and links to the bug report there.