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Issue and Pull Request templates

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131–140 of 143 posts

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#131
post #50

So, the issue template is just a default text that individual users can modify, delete, or otherwise disregard?

Would you also like for it to ensure that all check boxes in your template are checked prior to submitting? Ask the user to please submit to a lie detector test? I think this is a completely reasonable solution to the problem and will cover the 99% case.

I'm not sure why you think I'd want that.

I do however feel like it's a temporary and half-hearted quick fix. If it were possible to add custom fields to the issue tracker, they could be used to sort and filter issues. They wouldn't have to be required, but maybe if you don't fill them in, your issue would be labeled "incomplete".

Since they're now asking people to go ahead and add a template file to their repos, it will make it more inconvenient to change this later.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#132
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought long and hard about the "voting" mechanism, and I am really, really torn. Tons of people writing "+1" is a very aggressive voting mechanism. It is noisy and loud, which I think is a desirable trait for some issues on open source projects. There are lots of projects with awesome developers that listen to their users and are commendable souls. There are also lots of projects with developers that don't give…

But none of that matters for either kind of developer, does it? For the awesome ones it's just noise, and the bad ones will just ignore it. Why does it matter if it is a simple counter? It'll tell you exactly the same information, with a lot less cluster. And it'll help people reading through issues that are littered with it. Personally I think having a +1 counter is a win-win solution. And I detest all the +1 commen…

I didn't say anything about it mattering to the project's developers. I said it matters to me because it's an excellent indicator about the quality and personality of the developers working on a project. It helps me to avoid like the plague some janky project where some popular issues languish in 'locked to contributors' when some other project listens to users. Most importantly, when the time comes that I will want to contribute to a project I use by submitting bugfixes or PRs to support other functionality, I know what the climate is like. I'd much rather know to avoid a project before I even decide to use it than six months into embedding it into my production workflow.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#133
post #81
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get where you're coming from. An extra file in your repository is quite the burden. This template file is the straw that broke the camels back. It should be removed. But why stop there? Let's also remove the README.md from the repo. It can also have it's own independent revision history. Maybe they should also add a feature for managing the LICENSE file for you. /sarcasm

Besides what joshmanders said, I would argue a change in license is usually caused by a change in code and would also mark historically when a project went from X to Y. A README will probably also need to change with new code changes. As for having contributions file. I'm not really for that, but not against it either. The problem isn't that it's just one file (actually 2 if you're counting pr templates), the problem…

If gitlab stored its issues and wiki on a separate branch of the main git repo in some format I can still read when I decide that some other server (github, bitbucket or maybe just plain git), I would actually use those features. Right now they feel like completely unnecessary lock-in, so I’ll stick with Doxygen in-repo bugs/issues/todos and documentation.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#134
Now I actually start to worry. Did anybody here ever have the problem of making people happy with a software project?

The usual complain goes like this "You need to do X because I want to be able to do Y." In the complainers mind there is the untested idea that having X will enable him to do Y which solves his unspoken problem Z that he isn't even aware off. The thing is, at this time you don't know Z. You don't know if Y is really solving Z. And you don't know if X is really solving Y. And neither does he. But if you want him to use your tools he doesn't need to worry about that as much as you.

What happens if you just go like "Okay, user wants X, here is X!" is that the users will continue to complain (maybe even more) because Z is still not solved, and because there was no testing and planning involved X is actually creating another problem Z2 that nobody had before. At least that's my experience with an open source project I managed for about 3 years.

What I found actually needs to happen is to discover Z and to discover a way to solve it in the context of the project (which other people may not be as aware of as you are), and with an at least minimized chance of creating more problems. Then this actual solution needs to be sold to the users, because they are not aware of Z, so they think they don't care that you solved Z. But only after doing all that people will stop complaining (not even remembering that there was a problem and how much pain you went through to solve it of course).

Hope that makes sense and explains why I start to worry now, when everybody starts cheering. What I hoped would happen is that you don't hear much about the suggested changes, some other changes happen a few weeks down the road, and then the complains stops without anybody noticing. A success would be that you don't read about github anymore after 1-2 months. People cheering and github saying "Hey we did X" is a really bad thing.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#135
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes sense to have a difference in meaning between "I want to be e-mailed updates about this" (subscribe) versus "I think this is important/valuable/necessary" (star/vote).

Devils advocate: if you think it is important, then why don't you want to know when it's fixed? Starring instead of subscribing is basically the issues equivalent of "Hire, but not for this team". If you limit it to people who care enough to subscribe, you only get the people who actually are invested in it, and avoid the people who think it should be fixed but who don't actually need it to be.

> Devils advocate: if you think it is important, then why don't you want to know when it's fixed?

Because I've implemented a workaround (after spending a few hours tearing my hair out wondering why the straightforward version didn't work) and I may or may not ever remove the workaround, not to mention I might have dropped the project or changed company entirely by then.

I may or may not care that it's fixed (though I probably do in the chance that I have to do this again in the future and have by then forgotten about the need for a workaround), but I do want to notify somebody that I have hit that issue and have had to work around it, and that it would be nice if future users didn't go through my own experience.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#136
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this one is solved by showing the number of subscribers to an issue. I don't think this really needs to be a separate feature.

It'd be nice for GitHub to prevent (or at least annoy) people who make "+1" comments e.g. "Did you mean to subscribe instead?"

I think that would probably frustrate users more than anything. Positioning the subscribe option more prominently (along with the number of subscribers) might have the desired effect.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez. I would hope so. Too bad it took them the better part of half a decade to listen to users. I've already moved a number of my personal projects to Gitlab, Bitbucket or a self-hosted Gogs installation. I've still got reasons to stick with Github for some projects, but it's not the new hotness it used to be. $10 says the next new feature is voting on issues.

If the next feature is voting on issues then that would be great. They'd be implement Ling the features people are asking for.

GitHub had issue voting years ago and got rid of it because people hated it.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#138

Great job! Next item, be able to star issues. That would help a lot and we are able to avoid +1 comments.

Seems like this one is solved by showing the number of subscribers to an issue. I don't think this really needs to be a separate feature.

If people are still +1 commenting (and they are) it is still an issue and not solved by showing the number of subscribers.

Re: Issue and Pull Request templates

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this one is solved by showing the number of subscribers to an issue. I don't think this really needs to be a separate feature.

If people are still +1 commenting (and they are) it is still an issue and not solved by showing the number of subscribers.

The problem is that there is currently no way to see the number of subscribers on an issue so it can't be used as a signal of interest. I don't understand how a suggestion to change user behaviour can be proven false because the undesired behaviour exists before the change.
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