Tracking issues by owner

Assigning issue owners helps developers manage their own issue backlog and helps managers track developers' progress. You can assign ownership in two ways:

• by file, with a source ownership file
• by issue, in Validate

You can use these two methods separately or together.

An owner can be an existing user. File owners defined in the source ownership file set the default issue ownership displayed in Validate and in the desktop tools. If you do not use a source ownership file, issues are displayed as "unowned" until they are assigned in Validate. If you import an updated source ownership file, Validate modifies new issues and existing issues with no owner. Validate does not update the ownership of any issues that were previously assigned an owner. Ownership changes are recorded in the issue history in Validate.

In Validate, the following owners are available for assignment:

• owners defined in the source ownership file
• users defined in Basic access control
• users from NIS or LDAP

Users must have the Change Issue Owner permission to assign ownership in Validate.

A source ownership file is a text file with the extension .sow that associates a developer's user name with a file of source code. You can assign only one owner per file of source code.

Creating a source ownership file varies by organization. Typically you will prepare a script to generate a file that reads names of file owners from your source code management (SCM) system. The file must have the .sow extension. You will likely want to run your script and generate a new source ownership file before each analysis. Validate analysis uses only one source ownership file.

Syntax of the source ownership file

Each string has the format:

<owner>;<path>

where

• <owner> is any name (up to 255 symbols). Do not use semicolons (;).
• <path> is the absolute path to the file or class of source code. Wildcards or a path to a directory are not supported.

To specify multiple paths for the same owner, simply use multiple lines in the ownership file.

For example:

bsmith;/space/ta/src/a.c
bsmith;/space/ta/src/b.c

Empty fields are allowed as a way to delete ownership information.

To apply your new configuration file to the integration build analysis, import it into a project or the projects_root.

The file will take effect when the next integration build analysis is run.

Once the analysis is complete:

1. Log in to Validate.
2. Locate the project you configured in the projects list.
3. Click the Open Issues link.
4. Click any issue in the list.
5. In the issue details on the left, check for the Owner field.

To delete file ownership information, create a blank file with the .sow extension and import the file into the project. When the next integration build analysis is run, all file ownership information will be deleted.

Deleting file ownership information means that new detected issues will not have a default owner. The ownership of existing issues is not affected.