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This document seeks to outline how we as a community use GitHub Issues to track bugs and feature requests while still catering to development practices & project management (e.g., release cycles, feature planning, priority sorting, etc.).
Topics:
Note "Issue sorting" is similar to that of "triaging", but we've chosen to use different terminology because "triaging" is a word related to very weighty topics (e.g., injuries and war) and we would like to be sensitive to those connotations. Additionally, we are taking a more "fuzzy" approach to sorting (e.g., severities may not be assigned, etc.).
"Issue Sorting" refers to the process of assessing the priority of incoming issues. Below is a high-level diagram of the flow of tickets:
flowchart LR
subgraph flow_sorting [Issue Sorting]
board_sorting{{Sorting}}
board_support{{Support}}
board_sorting<-->board_support
end
subgraph flow_refinement [Refinement]
board_backlog{{Backlog}}
board_backlog-- refine -->board_backlog
end
subgraph flow_progress [In Progress]
board_progress{{In Progress}}
end
state_new(New Issues)
state_closed(Closed)
state_new-->board_sorting
board_sorting-- investigated -->board_backlog
board_sorting-- duplicates, off-topic -->state_closed
board_support-- resolved, unresponsive -->state_closed
board_backlog-- pending work -->board_progress
board_backlog-- resolved, irrelevant -->state_closed
board_progress-- resolved -->state_closed
In order to explain how various conda issues are evaluated, the following document will provide information about our sorting process in the form of an FAQ.
At the most basic "bird's eye view" level, sorted issues will fall into the category of four main priority levels:
- Do now
- Do sometime
- Provide user support
- Never do (i.e., close)
At its core, sorting enables new issues to be placed into these four categories, which helps to ensure that they will be processed at a velocity similar to or exceeding the rate at which new issues are coming in. One of the benefits of actively sorting issues is to avoid engineer burnout and to make necessary work sustainable; this is done by eliminating a never-ending backlog that has not been reviewed by any maintainers.
There will always be broad-scope design and architecture implementations that the conda maintainers will be interested in pursuing; by actively organizing issues, the sorting engineers will be able to more easily track and tackle both specific and big-picture goals.
Sorting engineers are a conda governance sub-team; they are a group of Anaconda and community members who are responsible for making decisions regarding closing issues and setting feature work priorities, amongst other sorting-related tasks.
New issues that are opened in any of the repositories in the conda GitHub project will show up in the Sorting view of the Planning project. This process is executed via GitHub Actions. The two main GitHub Actions workflows utilized for this purpose are Issues and Project.
The GitHub Actions in the conda/infra repository are viewed as canonical; the Sync workflow sends out any modifications to other conda repositories from there.
Issues in the "Sorting" tab of the project board have been reviewed by a sorting engineer and are considered ready for the following procedures:
- Mitigation via short-term workarounds and fixes
- Redirection to the correct project
- Determining if support can be provided for errors and questions
- Closing out of any duplicate/off-topic issues
The sorting engineers on rotation are not seeking to resolve issues that arise. Instead, the goal is to understand the ticket and to determine whether it is an issue in the first place, and then to collect as much relevant information as possible so that the maintainers of conda can make an informed decision about the appropriate resolution schedule.
Issues will remain in the "Sorting" tab as long as the issue is in an investigatory phase (e.g., querying the user for more details, asking the user to attempt other workarounds, other debugging efforts, etc.) and are likely to remain in this state the longest, but should still be progressing over the course of 1-2 weeks.
The additional tabs in the project board that the issues can be moved to include the following:
- "Support" - Any issue in the "Support" tab of the Planning board is a request for support and is not a feature request or a bug report. All issues considered "support" should include the https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/type%3A%3Asupport label.
- "Backlog" - The issue has revealed a bug or feature request. We have collected enough details to understand the problem/request and to reproduce it on our own. These issues have been moved into the Backlog tab of the Planning board at the end of the sorting rotation during Refinement.
- "Closed" - The issue was closed due to being a duplicate, being redirected to a different project, was a user error, a question that has been resolved, etc.
All sorted issues will be reviewed by sorting engineers during a weekly Refinement meeting in order to understand how those particular issues fit into the short- and long-term roadmap of conda. These meetings enable the sorting engineers to get together to collectively prioritize issues, earmark feature requests for specific future releases (versus a more open-ended backlog), tag issues as ideal for first-time contributors, as well as whether or not to close/reject specific feature requests.
Once issues are deemed ready to be worked on, they will be moved to the conda Backlog tab of the Planning board on GitHub. Once actively in progress, the issues will be moved to the In Progress tab of the Planning board and then closed out once the work is complete.
Issues are "backlogged" when they have been sorted but not yet earmarked for an upcoming release. Weekly Refinement meetings are a time when the conda engineers will transition issues from "Sorting" to "Backlog". Additionally, this time of handoff will include discussions around the kind of issues that were raised, which provides an opportunity to identify any patterns that may point to a larger problem.
Labeling is a very important means for sorting engineers to keep track of the current state of an issue with regards to the asynchronous nature of communicating with users. Utilizing the proper labels helps to identify the severity of the issue as well as to quickly understand the current state of a discussion.
Generally speaking, labels with the same category are considered mutually exclusive but in some cases labels sharing the same category can occur concurrently as they indicate qualifiers as opposed to types. For example, we may have the following types, https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/type%3A%3Abug, https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/type%3A%3Afeature, and https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/type%3A%3Adocumentation, where for any one issue there would be at most one of these to be defined (i.e. an issue shouldn’t be a bug and a feature request at the same time). Alternatively, with issues involving specific operating systems (i.e., https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/os%3A%3Alinux, https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/os%3A%3Amacos, and https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/os%3A%3Awindows), an issue could be labeled with one or more depending on the system(s) the issue is occurring on.
Please note that there are also automation policies in place. For example, if an issue is labeled as https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/pending%3A%3Afeedback and https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/unreproducible, that issue will be auto-closed after a month of inactivity.
Labels are defined using a scoped syntax with an optional high-level category (e.g., source, tag, type, etc.) and a specific topic, much like the following:
[topic][category::topic][category::topic-phrase]
This syntax helps with issue sorting enforcement; at minimum, both type and source labels should be specified on each issue before moving it from "Sorting" to "Backlog".
There are a number of labels that have been defined for the different conda projects. In order to create a streamlined sorting process, label terminologies are standardized using similar (if not the same) labels.
New global labels (i.e., generic labels that apply equally to all conda repos) can be added to the conda/infra's .github/global.yml file; new local labels (i.e., labels specific to particular conda repos) can be added to each repository's .github/labels.yml file. All new labels should follow the labeling syntax described in the "How are new labels defined?" section of this document.
Some of the same types of issues appear regularly (e.g., issues that are duplicates of others, tickets that should be filed in the Anaconda issue tracker, errors that are due to a user's specific setup/environment, etc.).
Below are some boilerplate responses for the most commonly-seen issues to be sorted:
Duplicate Issue
This is a duplicate of [link to primary issue]; please feel free to continue the discussion there.
Warning Apply the https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/duplicate label to the issue being closed and https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/duplicate%3A%3Aprimary to the original issue.
Requesting an Uninstall/Reinstall of conda
Please uninstall your current version of `conda` and reinstall the latest version. Feel free to use either the [miniconda](https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html) or [anaconda](https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual) installer, whichever is more appropriate for your needs.
Redirect to Anaconda Issue Tracker
Thank you for filing this issue! Unfortunately, this is off-topic for this repo. If you are still encountering this issue please reopen in the [Anaconda issue tracker](https://github.com/ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues/issues) where `conda` installer/package issues are addressed.
Warning Apply the https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/off-topic label to these tickets before closing them out.
Redirecting to Nucleus Forums
Unfortunately, this issue is outside the scope of support we offer via GitHub; if you continue to experience the problems described here, please post details to the [Nucleus forums](https://community.anaconda.cloud/).
Warning Apply the https://github.com/conda/infra/labels/off-topic label to these tickets before closing them out.
In order to not have to manually type or copy/paste the above repeatedly, please note that it's possible to add text for the most commonly-used responses via GitHub's "Add Saved Reply" option.
For all conda maintainers, we require commit signing and strongly recommend it for all others wishing to contribute to conda related projects. More information about how to set this up within GitHub can be found here:
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