goo.gle/chromium-devtools-issues
This document explains how Chromium DevTools (related) issues are tracked in the Chromium>Platform>DevTools component tree of crbug, how we define and manage priorities and Service Level Objectives (SLOs), as well as the overall bug life cycle.
In 2024 the Chromium project migrated crbug to the Google Issue Tracker, called Buganizer internally. While most of the functionality is generally available to all Chromium contributors, some of it is limited to Googlers, and can only be accessed via Buganizer internally.
The process for reporting a bug in Chromium DevTools follows the Chromium-wide Bug Life Cycle and Reporting Guidelines, and we encourage you to first read through the How to file a good browser bug article. Proceed according to the check list below:
You can use the shortlink goo.gle/devtools-bug or the Help > Report a DevTools issue menu item to start a new bug report.
You might need to login to the Google Issue Tracker first with a Google account in order to proceed from there. Afterwards the Defect from user template opens, where you can describe the bug. Note that the template defaults to Markdown (with a preview below the text input box).
<from chrome://version/> and <OS version> with the relevant version information.Check out the Issues Overview for a general introduction to the Google Issue Tracker. This section provides an overview of the Chromium DevTools specifics.
crbug supports a wide range of different issue types, with ambiguous semantics. For the Chromium DevTools component tree (Chromium>Platform>DevTools) we explicitly limit the set of types we use and give them well-defined semantics:
| Issue Type | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bug | The behavior does not match what is supposed to occur or what is documented. The product does not work as expected. |
| Feature Request | The product works as intended but could be improved. |
| Internal Cleanup | This is typically a maintenance issue. The issue has no effect on the behavior of a product, but addressing it may allow more intuitive interaction. |
| Privacy Issue | Privacy issues subject to the handling outlined in Google's Privacy Issue Bugs. |
| Task | A small unit of work. |
| Vulnerability | Security vulnerabilities subject to the handling outlined in Google's Vulnerability Priority Guidelines. |
These are used to track day-to-day work, primarily issues reported by users. We explicitly don't use the Customer Issue, Process, and Story types, because the former is already sufficiently covered with Bug, Privacy Issue and Vulnerability, while the latter two are basically just special sub types of Task and this fine-grained distinction would add more confusion than good. Any use of the disallowed issue types will be corrected automatically by the Blunderbuss bot.
We also explicitly disallow goal-type issues in the Chromium>Platform>DevTools component tree. Check out go/chrome-tooling/project-management for guidance how to manage goals using Feature and Project (Googlers-only).
Below is a table to guide how to think about priorities, aligned with Chromium's Triage Best Practices:
| Priority | Timeline | Description |
|---|---|---|
P0 (emergency) | Requires immediate resolution. | Regressions which are substantially impacting existing users, partners, or developers. High-risk security issues affecting the stable channel. Situations that create large, urgent, legal or financial risks for Google. |
P1 (priority engineering work) | Needed for target milestone. | Major Regressions. Work requiring prompt resolution. Work that has to get done before the targeted release. |
P2 (active engineering work) | Wanted for target milestone. | Non-urgent issues. Important issues that are worked on as best effort, without a milestone. Polish or bug fixing work in areas where the team has decided we want to invest. |
P3 (later, want to do) | Not time sensitive. | Something we want to do, but not right now. Legitimate issues that we will work on when we have the cycles to do so. |
P4 (later, maybe never) | Some day... or never. | Nice to have, but also fine not to have. |
The following components in crbug are owned by the Chrome DevTools team.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
Chromium>Platform>DevTools | Issues that don't fit any specific category |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Accessibility | DevTools' accessibility |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>AI | Console Insights and AI Assistance panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Animations | Animations panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Application | Application panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Browser Automation | Browser Automation issues |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Browser Automation>Headless | Chrome Headless issues |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Console | Console panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Elements | Elements panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Infra | Issues related to DevTools' infrastructure |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Issues | Issues panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Lighthouse | Lighthouse panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Memory | Heap/Memory Profiling, Memory Analysis |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Mobile | Mobile Emulation / Debugging |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Network | Network, Network conditions, Network request blocking panels |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Performance | Performance, Performance Monitor, Performance Insights panels |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Extensions | Issues related to DevTools extensions and extensibility |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Recorder | Recorder panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Security | Security panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>Sources | Sources panel |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>UX | Usability and interface issues |
Chromium>Platform>DevTools>WebAssembly | WebAssembly issues |
The Chrome DevTools TaskFlow Hotlists bookmark group contains all the hotlists relevant to issue management for Chromium DevTools (in particular via the Google internal Chrome DevTools TaskFlow).
In particular we use the following Chromium-wide hotlists.
| Hotlist | Description |
|---|---|
Chromium-Regression | Hotlist used to track user-noticeable regressions across Chromium. |
Needs-Feedback | Used by the TEs and the Triage Gardeners to request more feedback on an issue. The Chrome Blintz service will automatically remove the label once the reporter provides more feedback. |
TE-NeedsTriageHelp | Used by TEs when they cannot confirm a new issue and request help from the engineering team. |
Unconfirmed | All user reported issue start their life on this hotlist. TEs do a first level triage and try to reproduce the problem, and afterwards either close the issue, or remove it from this hotlist, and therefore forward it to our TaskFlow Inbox. |
User-Submitted | Part of the DevTools Issue template, all user reported issues start life on this hotlist. |
Available hotlist, however, meaning that we aren’t fully aligned with the Chromium-wide triage guidelines. In particular, for Chromium-wide dashboards that utilize Available as an indicator for the triage status, Chromium DevTools might show up with a high percentage of untriaged issues due to this fact.We use the T-Shirt sizes approach to estimate effort for the Chromium>Platform>DevTools component tree, based on the following guidelines:
| Size | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| S | Small CL | Styles bar loses focus in Chrome OS DevTools, Add 20x CPU throttling preset, Remove ‘Consistent source map variable experiment’, Autofill tab breaks with phone numbers starting with ‘+’ |
| M | Medium-sized CL or series of trivial CLs | Local overrides for New Tab Page misses one “/” in folder name, Memory tool should highlight common problems and opportunities, Improve the developer experience of using compression dictionaries |
| L | Large-sized CL or series of non-trivial CLs | Excluding sensitive data from HARs (HTTP Archives) by default, Exceptions in promise constructor should be treated as promise rejection |
| XL | quarter-long single-person or larger project | Performance Insights, Replace regex-matching in the StylesSidebarPane, MPArch migration, GM3 adoption |
In order to deliver a better product experience for developers using Chromium DevTools we want to
The following SLOs (Service Level Objectives) apply to issues of type “Bug”, “Vulnerability”, and “Privacy Issue”. other types of issues such as “Feature Request” or “Task” are out of scope for SLOs (with the notable exception of Postmortem action items, where Chrome also enforces SLOs for non-bug issues). We also explicitly restrict these SLOs to bugs in crbug, and are not concerned with bugs that are tracked in other places such as GitHub. Below is a high level summary of our SLOs (Googlers can check the Chrome SLO Policy for details):
| Assignment | Response | Closure | |
|---|---|---|---|
P0 | 1 business day | Every business day | 1 week |
P1 | 1 week | 1 week | 4 weeks |
These are identical to go/chrome-slo. crbug provides a Nearest SLO column that surfaces SLO violations easily:
In compliance with go/chrome-slo there are special SLOs for issues that are severe enough to block a release shipping to users (see go/chrome-release-slos). They apply to bug types in the same way as the above SLOs.
| Assignment | Response | Closure | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent | 1 day | Every day | 2 days |
| Standard | 2 days | Every 2 days | 10 days |
Googlers only: Buganizer provides a nice feature that allows you to subscribe to Email Reports for your SLO (violations). Just go to Settings in Buganizer and enable Subscribe to your own reports under SLO Reports.
This will get you a daily email (or whichever cadence you prefer) from Buganizer in your Inbox that shows you up to 25 P0 and P1 out-of-SLO issues.
Googlers only: You can use the Buganizer SLO Compliance dashboard, which is refreshed every 2-4 hours, to see SLO compliance for a given lead.