kareila: "Mom, I'm hungry." "Hush, I'm coding. You ate yesterday." (coding)
kareila ([personal profile] kareila) wrote in [site community profile] dw_dev2014-07-07 12:51 pm

Categorization of Issues on Github

Hi all! During Saturday's dev chat, one of the discussions that came up was the current status of our work on improving the process of using Github Issues as our bug tracker.

Here is where we are right now:

It is now possible for anyone to use inline text tags to categorize new issues. [personal profile] fu has put up a rough draft of the instructions for this process, along with a list of the labels that are currently recognized. We are also planning to allow issues to be "claimed" in a similar manner, although the format for doing that hasn't been finalized yet.

Another part of Github Issues that we've been experimenting with is the use of milestones. If you look at the milestones on dw-free you can see, for example, the status of open bugs on certain major projects like Foundation and mobile styles. I think this could be really useful, especially in light of recent comments saying that we haven't been doing a good job of communicating the progress of our major development projects within the development community.

There are also other milestones currently displayed on that page such as "unclaimed", "curated", and "in progress" - a lively discussion ensued as to whether these would be better used as tags instead of milestones, and I'd like to continue that discussion below. The main issue with milestones on Github in general is that a bug cannot be assigned to more than one milestone. From a workflow perspective, we would expect to see a progression of untriaged -> unassigned -> claimed/in progress -> pull request -> closed, and the fact that an issue cannot exist in more than one of those states at a time makes it a good candidate for the use of milestones - but could conflict with using milestones for the purpose of tracking large projects.

There was also a great deal of confusion as to what "curated" was supposed to mean in this context. [staff profile] mark said what he desired was a list of three or so "top priority" unclaimed bugs, so that he could easily decide what to spend his limited time on. Again, this may be a better candidate for a tag than a milestone, and maybe with a label that is easier to interpret.

The last issue mentioned is that we still haven't come up with tags for indicating which area of the code is involved with a bug (e.g. styles, notifications, etc.), which is something we relied on pretty heavily with our previous Bugzilla setup in order to find new things to work on.

Please continue the discussion in comments!
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2014-07-08 02:33 am (UTC)(link)
I like this split between labels and milestones.

I'm torn between "curated" as milestone or label though. I think if we had a concrete goal "these bugs should be done by code push on date x", then I could see it as being more of a milestone. Otherwise, it seems closer to a label.

[personal profile] swaldman 2014-07-12 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Agreed. Milestones make sense if they are used for actual milestones (i.e. target code pushes). They may also make sense for major goals, *IF* (and IMHO this is a big if) we are confident that no bug could ever be relevant to more than one major goal.

Curated should definitely not be a milestone, if milestones are being used for anything else - because it could overlap with almost any other taxonomy.

I'm afraid I still don't understand what we gain by trying to shoehorn something into the Milestones system rather than using tags. Is it just that we want to use it because it's there? ;-)
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2014-07-13 01:32 am (UTC)(link)

The way I see it, all the project-based tags will be done at some point. The mobile friendly styles one, for example, is eight bugs away from completion. At that point we can close the milestone and consider it done.

If it were a tag though then we'd just have an obsolete tag hanging around forever....

[personal profile] swaldman 2014-07-13 07:15 am (UTC)(link)
Hmm, true. OTOH, if a bug is important to two major goals, you're gonna have a problem.

I assume GHI doesn't have any concept of dependancies? (ie x blocks y, which then allows you to create a metabug for a major project)
fu: Close-up of Fu, bringing a scoop of water to her mouth (Default)

[personal profile] fu 2014-07-13 07:22 am (UTC)(link)

No sadly. I've had that problem with filing a bug for making the entry page into foundation -- since we have a milestone for the entry page and another for foundation. Eventually I decided to use the more concrete one.

I think that it'll be relatively rare -- at least rare enough that we can handle them on a case by case basis :)

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2014-07-07 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I really want a babydev-bait tag (or moral equivalent with less informal language, depending on discussion)
alierak: (Default)

[personal profile] alierak 2014-07-07 06:18 pm (UTC)(link)
That's sort of like "effort:lower", except not to trivialize the actual amount of work it would be for a beginner?
foxfirefey: A guy looking ridiculous by doing a fashionable posing with a mouse, slinging the cord over his shoulders. (geek)

[personal profile] foxfirefey 2014-07-07 06:22 pm (UTC)(link)
There are certain classes of bugs that are really really trivial to implement if you are familiar with the codebase that make really good bugs for beginners (for instance, adding embeds--very well defined on what you do so a beginner can focus on everything else). There are other classes of bugs that are fairly trivial to implement if you are familiar with the codebase that aren't such good bugs for beginners. That's why "effort: minor" on Bugzilla could never be given out as a babydev bait list--there was no distinction.

Perhaps "effort:introductory" would be applicable here?
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2014-07-08 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
+1 with this sentiment (no strong opinion on effort: beginner/effort: introductory)
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)

[staff profile] denise 2014-07-08 02:41 am (UTC)(link)

I like effort: introductory, but history has proven I am very bad at judging this, so other people should be the ones to tag it :P

fu: Close-up of Fu, bringing a scoop of water to her mouth (Default)

[personal profile] fu 2014-07-08 02:43 am (UTC)(link)

I think that [personal profile] kaberett and [personal profile] foxfirefey have been doing a good job of picking out babydev bugs!

Thought -- two tags "curated: beginner", "curated: highpriority/rahsaysso"?

foxfirefey: A picture of GIR. (gir)

[personal profile] foxfirefey 2014-07-08 02:46 am (UTC)(link)
I like the though of being able to match "curated: beginner" up with "effort: minor"!
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)

[staff profile] denise 2014-07-08 06:15 am (UTC)(link)

I like mostwanted!

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2014-07-07 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I think there's a difference between a low-effort bug for someone familiar with the codebase, and the kind of bug that's a good introduction to a particular area of the code/how to get set up with a Dreamhack/etc.
alierak: (Default)

[personal profile] alierak 2014-07-07 06:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Something tells me the milestones page won't necessarily help with communication if it thinks we're 100% done with the Foundation conversion. I guess we'd have to plan out all the changes and open bugs for them ahead of time to conform with the implied expectations of GitHub.
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2014-07-08 02:41 am (UTC)(link)
I am not too fussed by that; I think it's useful to give a sense of progress if you've been working on something long-running, but we should be able to just open new bugs in a milestone at any time.

I'm against opening an issue for all pages that need foundation conversion though. That would flood our bug tracker unfortunately.
momijizukamori: Grey tabby cat with paws on keyboard and mouse. The text reads 'code cat is on the job', lolcats-style (CODE CAT)

[personal profile] momijizukamori 2014-07-09 01:13 am (UTC)(link)
We could just label the stuff for Mark 'HEY MARK' :P?

/dodges fruit

(In seriousness, the categorization I'd really like is the site-section ones because then I don't have to scan the whole list for styles bugs)
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)

[personal profile] momijizukamori 2014-07-09 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)

....was that only open, or all bugs, closed and open?

(mostly I'm going @.@ at 900+ style system bugs)

momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)

[personal profile] momijizukamori 2014-07-09 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)

Phew, okay. That's a little less worrying.