ICU tickets follow a definite path through their life, from initially being opened, through implementation or fixes, to closing and release of the changes in an updated version of ICU.

Ticket Types

1. Defects: These are opened to report some problem with ICU - incorrect results from the code itself, errors in documentation, errors in the project website or on-line tools, etc. 
   
   A good defect report should include enough information to allow the problem to be reproduced, including
   
   • the version of ICU
   • the Operating system type and version
   • the compiler version
   • for Java code, the JDK version
   • a code snippet that exhibits the problem, preferably small and self-contained

1. Features: These are opened to request the addition of new functions or features to ICU.
   
   Note: Feature requests used to have "RFE:" (Request for Enhancement) in their description because our former ticket database did not have any other mechanism to distinguish between defects and features. While many ICU Feature tickets still retain this, it is obsolete usage, replaced by the Ticket Type field.
   
   
2. Tasks: These represent work items to be done in support of the ICU project that aren't directly visible to users of the library.

Submission

Tickets may be submitted by anyone, at any time. Before submitting a defect, it is good practice to check whether the problem has already been submitted to Trac database.

Initial Evaluation

A members of the ICU development team will monitor incoming tickets and make an initial evaluation. Some tickets may be resolved as duplicates of other tickets, or as invalid (submitter misunderstood expected behavior) at this stage. Remaining tickets will be assigned an owner.

Scheduling

As part of the planning cycle of an ICU release, a set of open tickets will be marked for inclusion by setting the "Milestone" field to the release number and planned mile stone number.

Prioritization is primarily based on the requirements of the companies providing the developers to the project.

Additional contributions to the project are welcome, so long as they are consistent with the overall objectives and design of ICU. But do talk to the ICU development team first, via the project mail lists.

Coding

At the time actual work begins, the developer should accept the ticket, and set the Milestone field to reflect the development milestone that is expected to have the fix or feature (if it is not set already).

For non-trivial commits (If in doubt, it's non-trivial), it's best to do feature work on a branch. See "Merging-and-Branching" for some tips on branch work. Here are some examples of why you would do work on a branch:

• You expect contention:  It's a large involved change, over a period of time, and other developers may commit code that conflicts with yours.
• You are looking for review and/or testing during the development process:  Others can pick up the branch and try it, or view the commits. 
• You expect test breakage during the development process.  Commits to the trunk should not break tests.  Work on a branch until the tests are clean.

All commits of code back to subversion must include the associated ticket number with the commit message. This information will be used by reviewers to identify the complete list of changes associated with a particular ticket.

svn commit messages have the form
ticket:1234: a short message describing the changes being checked in

Fixed by Other Changes

If a ticket - defect or feature - is handled by changes associated with a different ticket, a brief explanation of the situation should be added to each ticket involved, and all of the tickets should be proceed through the normal process to the review step. We do not want to lose track of the fact that a reported problem was fixed simply because it was one of a group of related problems that were fixed by a single set of code changes.

Testing

For defects, before making any fixes to the implementation code, a test should be written that fails because of the problem. The problem should then be fixed, the fix being checked by the just-written test.

C and Java

Most ICU services exist in both C and Java. Any defect reported against one side should be checked (the test ported) to the other, and if it exists, it must there as well. This must be done before moving to the review step.

Review

Once the developer believes the defect to be fixed, he/she will assign a reviewer for the changes. The developer does not marked as fixed at this step. The reviewer is normally another ICU developer with some familiarity with the area of the code involved.

The reviewer will look over the changes. If all appears to be OK, the defect will be resolved as "fixed" in the database. If there are questions, the reviewer will directly contact the developer to resolve them.

Release Tags and Maintenance Branches

For each release we create a maintenance branch, typically before we publish a release candidate. Example: http://bugs.icu-project.org/trac/log/branches/maint/maint-60

The trunk and maintenance branch may diverge some before the initial release. Changes that are agreed for the release candidate are cherry-picked by the release manager into the maintenance branch.

When we publish a release candidate, we create a tag from the maintenance branch. Example: http://bugs.icu-project.org/trac/log/tags/release-60-rc

The release manager may commit further cherry-pick changesets from the trunk to the maintenance branch.

The initial release is another tag off of the maintenance branch. Example: ICU 60.1 http://bugs.icu-project.org/trac/log/tags/release-60-1

When we have bugs that should go into a maintenance branch or release, we set the next milestone (e.g., 61m1) and add the keyword "maint". The bug fix changeset is committed to the trunk using the bug fix ticket number.

When we decide to apply a bug fix to a maintenance branch:

• For a maintenance branch or release for the most recent ICU version, say, 60.2:
• If there is no 60.2 milestone yet, then add it to the roadmap and create a 60.2 release ticket.
• The 60.2 release manager commits the bug fix cherry-pick changeset to the maintenance branch.
• Then change the bug ticket to milestone 60.2.
• Note: As a result, tickets for ICU 61 show what changed since the last ICU 60.x maintenance release, corresponding to what users see who stay up to date with the latest official releases.
• For a maintenance branch or release for an earlier ICU version, say, 58.3:
• If there is no 58.3 milestone yet, then add it to the roadmap and create a 58.3 release ticket.
• Use 58.3 even if we do not plan to actually publish a 58.3 release.
• Do not call the milestone "58.x". Use the next available maintenance release minor version number.
• The 58.3 release manager commits the bug fix cherry-pick changeset to the maintenance branch.
• Then add the keyword "maint58.3" to the bug ticket.
• A ticket may collect multiple such keywords.

When we publish a maintenance release, we create a tag from the maintenance branch. Example: http://bugs.icu-project.org/trac/log/tags/release-60-2

Note: Some of this is new since 2017-dec-13. Before that, we treated the maintenance branch and releases of the most recent ICU version like earlier ones, and we did not use release-specific maint58.3 etc. keywords.

Ticket Components