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Merge issue

Description

  • Merge issue A into issue B.
  • Close issue A.
  • Copy the description and comment thread of A into an issue thread of B.
  • Copy over description award emoji (maybe).

Related

Original description

Description

If there is an (obvious) issue, it often gets reported multiple times, independently. Sometimes simply closing such reports on the same thing can be simply closed as duplicate.

However, sometimes each of the reports contains information not found in the other issues. So, while they all relate to the same underlying problem, they are not really duplicates. They should all be closed simultaneously (and: none of them should be closed early, as all (may) contain valuable information for the final resolution.

We already have cross references, but I think this doesn't solve the underlying issue, as they are too loosely coupled. Also, anybody and their dog can cross-reference issues, whereas deciding whether two reports refer to the same thing should probably be left to someone in the knowe (e.g. a dev/admin/...)

Proposal

Provide a mechanism to merge two issues (and probably also to unmerge them).

I see two possibilities:

  • two issues become one: you get to the very same information regardless of whether you go to issues/42 or issues/666; probably you are just redirected to the main issue when browsing to the secondary one. All posts that were sent to any of the issues individually are shown. (This is probably not such a splendid thing, since the issues only allow for a linear non-threaded discussion, and merging two discussions could cause great confusion)

  • the two issues are linked only in their metadata: whenever any one is closed/reopened/assigned/tagged/..., this operation applies to all merged issues. the page for each issue should make it obvious, that it is merged with another issue.

This is btw the way the Debian folks handle it in their battle-tested BTS.

Links / references

https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control#merge