Issue Management
================

Bugs, feature requests and other things we need to do are tracked as
Github issues. Issues can be of various types and in various states, and
also belong to milestones or not. This page is an attempt to document
the current practice.

Labels
------

Issues without labels are undecided - that is, we don't yet know if it's
a bug, a configuration issue, a feature request or what. Issues that are
invalid for whatever reason are closed with a short explanation of why.
Examples include "Duplicate of #123", "Discovered to be configuration
error", "Rendered moot by #123" and so on. We don't use the "invalid" or
"wontfix" labels.

android
    Marks an issue as occurring on the Android platform only.

bug
    The issue is a verified bug.

build
    The issue is caused by or requires changes to the build system
    (scripts or Docker image).

docs
    Something requires documenting.

easy
    This could be easily fixed, probably an hour's work or less.
    These issues are good starting points for new contributors.

enhancement
    This is a new feature or an improvement of some kind, as
    opposed to a problem (bug).

help-wanted
    The core team can't or won't do this, but someone else is welcome
    to. This does not mean that help is not wanted on the *other*
    issues. You can see this as a soft ``wontfix``. (A hard ``wontfix``
    is simply a close with a short explanation why.)

pr-bugfix
    This pull request *fixes* a bug. This is different from the ``bug``
    label, as there may also be pull requests with for example tests
    that *prove* a bug which would then be labeled ``bug``.

pr-refactor
    This pull request is a refactoring, i.e. not supposed to change
    behavior.

pr-WIP
    This pull request is not ready for merging, even if the tests
    pass and it looks good. It is incomplete or requires more
    discussion.

protocol
    This requires a change to the protocol.

Milestone
---------

There are milestones for major and sometimes minor versions. An issue
being assigned to a milestone means it is a blocker - the release can't
be made without the issue being closed. Issues not assigned to a
milestone can be handled whenever.

Assignee
--------

Users can be assigned to issues. We don't usually do so. Sometimes
someone assigns themself to an issue to indicate "I'm working on this"
to avoid others doing so too. It's not mandatory.

Locking
-------

We don't normally lock issues (prevent further discussion on them).
There are some exceptions though;

-  "Popular" issues that attract lots of "me too" and "+1" comments.
   These are noise and annoy people with useless notifications via mail
   and in the Github interface. Once the issue is clear and it suffers
   from this symptom I may lock it.

-  Contentious bikeshedding discussions. After two sides in a discussion
   have clarified their points, there is no point arguing endlessly
   about it. As above, this may get closed.

-  Duplicates. Once an issue has been identified as a duplicate of
   another issue, it may be locked to prevent further discussion there.
   The intention is to move the discussion to the other (referenced)
   issue, while someone just doing a search and jumping on the first
   match might otherwise resurrect discussion in the duplicate.
