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2016 GitLab-ce Issue Bash Proposal

Summary

We want GitLab to be fun to contribute to and we always want contributors to be able to easily find issues that they will be able to work on. The number of open issues against our main issue tracker is large, forever growing, and this makes it difficult to search for issues to work on for both the GitLab Inc. team and members of the GitLab community.

Just like a Bug Bash, an Issue Bash is an event where anyone from the community can get involved in an attempt to drive down the number of open issues in the GitLab-ce issue tracker.

The main actions that would really help us are as follows. There is a lot of work to be done and this will provide a means for both technical and non-technical members of the community to help out.

We will need volunteers that are willing to help with the following:

Fantastic Issues and Where to Find Them

Closing of Issues

  • Identifying duplicates issues and mentioning a member of the team
  • Team member will triage and possibly close as a duplicate
  • (Non technical) Will need to be able to search through issues and identify duplicates
  • Attempting to reproduce labelled bugs in a test project on GitLab.com and mention a team member with the results of their investigation (suggesting labels, suggesting closure, etc)
  • Team member will triage and close if the bug is no longer reproducible
  • (Both Technical and Non technical) Some bugs are harder to reproduce than others, but the majority should be reproducible using a test project created on GitLab.com
Best place to start:
  • Not really a suggestion for finding duplicates. Duplicates could exist for any issue and we don't have any particular view that makes finding them easier.
  • Existing bugs view will help for determining if old bugs should be closed as non-reproducible or kept open
Best way to help out

Comment on issues about what you have found out and your suggestions for issues, whether to close or keep open and if you've found a duplicate, mention the issue ID. Mention a key contact so that the correct course of action can be taken

Categorising Existing Issues

  • Investigate unlabelled issues with the aim of providing a suitable label and mentioning a team member
  • Team member will apply suggested label
  • (Non technical)
Best place to start:
  • Unlabelled issues
  • These issues are all unlabelled and open, they haven't been triaged as of yet
  • These issues are listed in order of first raised, so some may no longer be valid, some will be old
  • These issues may contain interesting feature proposals or bugs that haven't yet been categorised
Best way to help out

Write a comment on the issue mentioning a key contact and the labels suggested using the label syntax ~label

Fixing known bugs and pain points or shipping existing feature proposals

  • Look into the issues labelled as bug , attempt to reproduce and provide a Merge Request to fix
  • Team member will label the issues and merge requests as needed and mention other team members that can help progress the original issue to closure
  • (Technical and Non technical) Some bugs are easier to fix and may only require changes to documentation which can be done via the Web Interface, some are much more difficult to fix
  • Look into the issues labelled as ~up-for-grabs feature proposal , understand the use case and create a Merge Request to provide the new functionality
  • Team member will label the issues and merge requests as needed and mention other team members that can help progress the original issue to closure
  • (Technical and Non technical) Some feature proposals are easier to write and may only require changes to documentation which can be done via the Web Interface, some are much more difficult to satisfy
Best place to start:
  • Existing bugs
  • These issues have all been categorised as bugs at one time or another
  • These issues are ordered by oldest updated first
  • These bugs may have been fixed and therefore the issues are no longer reproducible and should be closed.
  • These bugs may still stand and a contributor could pick up the issue and provide a fix in a Merge Request
  • These bugs will touch on all sorts of categories from Documentation to style fixes to frontend and backend fixes. There's plenty for everyone
  • Up for grabs bugs
  • These issues have already been opened up for a Community Contribution
  • These issues have been categorised as a bug
  • These issues are listed in order of first raised
  • Up for grabs feature proposals
  • These issues have already been opened up for a Community Contribution
  • These issues have been categorised as a feature proposal
  • These issues are listed in order of first raised
  • First Timers Only issues
  • Ideal for new contributors!
Best way to help out

Submit a Merge Request with a potential fix for the issue and mention a key contact so that proper labels can be assigned. The normal review process for Community Contributions will then commence

Core and team members to action volunteer suggestions and findings

Community and comms

We will need to inform the community of the event to get as many people as we can involved:

  • Set dates for the event, we will initially attempt to do a couple of 2 day events at the weekend to see how it goes
  • Community comms
    • Blog post
    • Tweets
    • Announcement on the Forum