Github Issue Labels

[Chris Meller]

I'd like to try and get some organization behind the labels we have on Github.

We've historically used them more like tags, trying to add anything the issue relates to. This doesn't scale well, since you have to flip back and forth to add labels on a separate page, and then they end up having 1 or 2 issues assigned to them because no one knows what labels there are so they don't bother.

I'd like to see us cut the list down to some very basics, like 'critical', 'blocker', 'has_patch', 'needs_review', 'bug', 'enhancement', etc. Things that, in addition to milestone, would make it easy for us to glance at exactly what needs to be done for a release, what can easily be closed, etc.

Things that we currently have as labels (or did before I just deleted several more) that don't fit well into the Github paradigm would include: date, flickr, il8n, pingback, pluggable, validation, viddler, xml.

None of those have more than 1 or 2 issues assigned to them, which means they aren't inclusive enough to be truly useful, and they make it more difficult to find the ones we're actually looking for.

Thoughts?

[Owen Winkler]

On 3/31/2013 12:25 PM, Chris Meller wrote:
>
> Thoughts?
>

Make it so.

Also, I'd like to suggest that we not assign "blocker" to anything
without also assigning a milestone. It's hard to know what is blocked
when that's not assigned.

Owen

[Chris Meller]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Owen Winkler <epi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, I'd like to suggest that we not assign "blocker" to anything without also assigning a milestone.  It's hard to know what is blocked when that's not assigned.

Totally agreed. I don't like the label or milestone workflow on Github, it makes it a pain to work with either. We should go ahead and create a bunch of future milestones with no release dates, just so we always have *something* to assign things to.

[rick c]

I've no problem with it. I use the labels, but can live without them. They tend to multiply like the tags on the site, being added without looking if something already exists that applies. Many of them also have only one or two issues because often people file a ticket without adding *any* label, and the labels that exist on them were added after the fact.

 

[Chris Meller]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 6:58 PM, rick c <rickc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Many of them also have only one or two issues because often people file a ticket without adding *any* label, and the labels that exist on them were added after the fact.

Yeah, they're a pain to find and use, so I think limiting them to a small set will make it a lot more likely that that won't happen.

[Konzertheld]

Agreed on limiting them a bit more and also on assigning "blocker" only together with a milestone.

I use the labels and find them useful. But I just use some of them, when the issue is obviously dealing with a larger part of Habari, like "admin", "installer", "FormUI" or so. So I suggest having all those we had on Trac for status, priority etc (like you listed) and additionally some basic labels for large parts of Habari. That would also include one for every core plugin.