Why is an empty version (fixVersion/s, affectsVersion/s) treated differently.

Question

Recently, I've been getting a lot of questions around why Jira treats an empty version differently. The primary use case is when people write a query like 'project = MyProject and fixVersion != Current Release'. They'd expect items without a fixVersion to be returned however, they find that items without a fixVersion are not returned until they add the statment and fixVersion is empty.

Why is that? I tried searching but couldn't find anything.

Greg Reeve · Answer

Good question. I'd also like to know why query fixVersion != SomeVersion does not return issues in query fixVersion is EMPTY?

Seems to me that fixVersion is EMPTY  implies fixVersion != SomeVersion

John Diaz · Answer

I have problems with this: I'm trying to search issues that do not have  a fixversion. I omited the fixversion in the field configuration for a project, but when I create a new issue does not appear in the filter. I don'n know why this doesn't work if the filter  is "fixversion is empty", and I suppose if I don't set any fixversion for a issue this value is empty.

So, what can I do?

Chung Park Chan · Answer

When you search for 'fixVersion != Current Release', the search results will be issues wihout a Fix Version of "Current Release" and not with issues without a Fixed Version. Therefore you need to add  'fixVersion IS EMPTY' for issues without a Fixed Version.

Hope that clarifies.