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Devil's advocate: some projects are extremely open-ended and will always have issues, hundreds of them. Bugs will be a permanent condition of the project so som

by vemv 5y ago

Devil's advocate: some projects are extremely open-ended and will always have issues, hundreds of them. Bugs will be a permanent condition of the project so some bugs might be not deemed relevant, ever. Auto-closing helps here. If nobody is attending a given issue, definitionally it doesn't have an economic value: nobody deemed the issue/task worth solving OR paying for it. It might be annoying, but not sufficiently annoying to take action. It doesn't block your business, workflow, productivity etc; if it was, you'd be personally involved in solving the issue in some or other way.

MereInterest 5y ago
> Devil's advocate: some projects are extremely open-ended and will always have issues, hundreds of them. Open-ended projects may have design/feature request issues, but those should be distinct from bug reports. And those design/feature request issues are exactly the kind that most require human interaction, to decide whether something should be part of the program. > Bugs will be a permanent condition of the project Bugs are a fact of life for any developing software. Any particular bug is not. Closing an issue is a statement about that particular bug being fixed. Auto-closing an issue due to staleness is a lie that the bug has been fixed. That said, if there's an automated reproducible test case for the bug, then it could be closed when that reproducible test case passes. If a seemingly unrelated change resolves the issue, and that can be verified, then it would be acceptable to auto-close the issue as a result. > so some bugs might be not deemed relevant, ever. Auto-closing helps here. There's a big difference between "not deemed relevant" and "deemed not relevant". The former is when you have an issue that sits open for some time, and sure, that might not be relevant right now, but could be important later. The latter is an active decision that something is irrelevant and never will be relevant. That's the message received from an issue being closed, which is a far more aggressive message. Auto-closing delivers this aggressive message, throwing away the work somebody has done in reporting the issue, without even so much as an acknowledgement. > if it was, you'd be personally involved in solving the issue in some or other way. Reporting an issue is being personally involved in solving it. Writing a solid issue, clearly documenting how to reproduce, expected behavior, observed behavior, why the expected behavior would be closer aligned with other behavior in the program, etc, takes time and effort.

by vemv 5y ago

MereInterest 5y ago

> Devil's advocate: some projects are extremely open-ended and will always have issues, hundreds of them. Open-ended projects may have design/feature request issues, but those should be distinct from bug reports. And those design/feature request issues are exactly the kind that most require human interaction, to decide whether something should be part of the program. > Bugs will be a permanent condition of the project Bugs are a fact of life for any developing software. Any particular bug is not. Closing an issue is a statement about that particular bug being fixed. Auto-closing an issue due to staleness is a lie that the bug has been fixed. That said, if there's an automated reproducible test case for the bug, then it could be closed when that reproducible test case passes. If a seemingly unrelated change resolves the issue, and that can be verified, then it would be acceptable to auto-close the issue as a result. > so some bugs might be not deemed relevant, ever. Auto-closing helps here. There's a big difference between "not deemed relevant" and "deemed not relevant". The former is when you have an issue that sits open for some time, and sure, that might not be relevant right now, but could be important later. The latter is an active decision that something is irrelevant and never will be relevant. That's the message received from an issue being closed, which is a far more aggressive message. Auto-closing delivers this aggressive message, throwing away the work somebody has done in reporting the issue, without even so much as an acknowledgement. > if it was, you'd be personally involved in solving the issue in some or other way. Reporting an issue is being personally involved in solving it. Writing a solid issue, clearly documenting how to reproduce, expected behavior, observed behavior, why the expected behavior would be closer aligned with other behavior in the program, etc, takes time and effort.