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<p class="MsoNormal">Ben<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m struggling to establish a clear understanding of the life cycle of an issue.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Consider <a href="https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/15872">
https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/15872</a>. Here is my faithfully recorded chain of thought at 2330 on a Tuesday night.<o:p></o:p></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">I can see that it is closed<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">But I wonder if it was fixed?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Well, scrolling up from the bottom, apparently it was mentioned in no fewer than six patches. That’s odd. Why is this issue mentioned in six patches?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Oh, one of those six patches is a dup, mentioned twice. No idea why.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Are any of the five The Patch that is designed to fix this issue. Indeed does The Patch exist at all? And what MR is it in?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Oh, what
<b>is</b> that MR?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Hmm. Well Ryan says “I’ve opened MR 851”. Maybe that’s it?
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Let’s head over to MR 851:
<a href="https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/merge_requests/851">https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/merge_requests/851</a><o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Oh! It just says “Closed”. I was hoping it’d say “merged”, but no.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Uh oh. Near the top it says “Closed by Omer”... “the changes were not merged into master”.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Then scrolling further down there is a lot of noise from Marge, followed by a presumably hand-written message from Omer saying “Merged as
<a href="/ghc/ghc/commit/cc495d5777c01ef62129df15caacf87b0e430c6b">cc495d57</a>.”.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Huh. So maybe it did get merged after all.<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You can see how confused I am. It all just feels like much more work to find relevant info than it should be. It’s frustrating because all the info is in the system, -- it’s just hard (for me) to find.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An issue should say prominently: this is The MR (or MRs) that fixes the issue.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It should be easy to tell if those MR(s) have been successfully merged – along with their commit messages (this will come Moe Bot).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Trac used to let you close a ticket as “fixed” or “wont-fix” or “invalid” etc. This was Jolly Useful. Doesn’t Gitlab?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Similarly, MRs sould be closed as “merged” or “abandoned”.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Much of this is not under your control – it’s what GitLab does. But maybe we should have stronger best-practice guidelines. Eg “Never just close an issue; always say “Closing as won’t fix” or...”. etc.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Simon<o:p></o:p></p>
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