`stalled-pr` label vs. JIRA status

[Jesse Glick]

We have recently started using a `stalled-pr` label in JIRA to mark
issues which have an associated pull request that has not been merged
and has no immediate prospects of merging—unresolved conflicts,
unaddressed review comments, etc. Perhaps this should be made into a
proper *Status* in JIRA so that you could transition

Open → In Progress → In Review → Stalled

or similar? This way it would be clearer from issue searches and the
like that there was some work on the issue but more work would be
needed to get it over the line. What do people think?

[Mark Waite]

+1 from me.

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Thanks!

Mark Waite

[Daniel Beck]

Happy to implement this, but after my experience with JEP-3 I would ask for the following:

- New status name ("Stalled" probably)
- one sentence description
- category
- where it sorts into the list of existing statuses

Reference: https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/secure/ShowConstantsHelp.jspa?decorator=popup#StatusTypes

Additionally, a complete list of transitions to add, which each consist of:
- from status
- to status
- button label (For example "Stop Progress" is the label for In Progress -> Open)
- optionally a screen to show, and what fields it should contain

[Jesse Glick]

On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 3:26 PM Daniel Beck <m...@beckweb.net> wrote:
> - New status name ("Stalled" probably)

STALLED

> - one sentence description

Some work was done on this issue, but there is no clear plan for it to
be completed.

> - category

IN PROGRESS

> - where it sorts into the list of existing statuses

Perhaps between REOPENED and IN REVIEW.

> Additionally, a complete list of transitions to add, which each consist of:
> - from status
> - to status
> - button label (For example "Stop Progress" is the label for In Progress -> Open)

I guess these should suffice:

IN PROGRESS → STALLED “Stalled”
IN REVIEW → STALLED “Stalled”
STALLED → IN PROGRESS “Back in progress”
STALLED → OPEN “No longer in progress”

> - optionally a screen to show, and what fields it should contain

Do not think anything like that would be needed.

[Oliver Gondža]

I am wondering, do we really want to invest so much energy to clearly
label clutter (stalled PRs) in both github and JIRA? The way I look at
it is the PR failed to deliver the fix for the issue in question but
there might be others created in the future - I is not clear to me what
value is there in forwarding this info to JIRA.

Not that I have any numbers at hand on how often such stalled PRs dies,
revives, or keep being stalled - I presume they just sit there until
closed more of then then not, but I am wondering if an efficient way to
close such PRs would not be a better time investment. We would get rid
of what I see as clutter rather then precisely label it for someone else
to do something about it later.

--
oliver

[Daniel Beck]

> On 5. Apr 2019, at 08:20, Oliver Gondža <ogo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am wondering, do we really want to invest so much energy to clearly label clutter (stalled PRs) in both github and JIRA? The way I look at it is the PR failed to deliver the fix for the issue in question but there might be others created in the future - I is not clear to me what value is there in forwarding this info to JIRA.
>
> Not that I have any numbers at hand on how often such stalled PRs dies, revives, or keep being stalled - I presume they just sit there until closed more of then then not, but I am wondering if an efficient way to close such PRs would not be a better time investment. We would get rid of what I see as clutter rather then precisely label it for someone else to do something about it later.

There is some value in maintaining a link between an issue and its PR especially if the PR is half-finished (or even more) and just abandoned. PRs and code review comments of one attempt can also inform the next. So I'm all for ensuring there's a PR link in Jira, and perhaps even a label.

That said, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of the status would be. The existence of a stalled PR alone does not have an intrinsic meaning, like that an issue just needs a minor push over the finish line, that the current assignee is no longer interested in it, or that there would be no reviewers able to process it. None of these would apply in all cases.

[Jesse Glick]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 7:43 AM Daniel Beck <m...@beckweb.net> wrote:
> None of these would apply in all cases.

True, but I think the commonality would be that someone who is
committed to pushing it forward would not be starting from scratch.
The lack of interested reviewers is often due to the original PR being
too hard to review, whether because it had too many small issues that
were not getting cleaned up proactively, or was making a dangerous
change with inadequate testing or kill switches, etc.

At any rate, if both Oliver and Daniel are skeptical about the need
then it would be better to withdraw the suggestion.