[llvm-dev] RFC: Switching from Bugzilla to Github Issues

[Joseph Tremoulet via llvm-dev]

+1 to the idea of using teams (at least until there are good options for filtering by tag); we use it in the dotnet projects and in my experience it's worked well there.  I have been happily oblivious to and not notified about most dotnet issues, but whenever somebody tagged the @dotnet/jit-contrib team I'd get a notification, and what's more Github includes metadata[1] in the cc line when it sends notification emails, letting me set up inbox rules to route notifications about issues where I'm included by team_mention (@dotnet/jit-contrib) separately from issues where I'm included individually.

-Joseph

[1] https://help.github.com/en/github/receiving-notifications-about-activity-on-github/about-email-notifications#filtering-email-notifications

[apologies to those of you receiving this twice; my mail client likes to drop llvm-dev from reply-all for some reason...]


-----Original Message-----
From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Sachkov, Alexey via llvm-dev
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2019 12:41 PM
To: Robinson, Paul <paul.robinson at sony.com>; James Y Knight <jyknight at google.com>; llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Switching from Bugzilla to Github Issues

> Is that only new issues?  Or all activity?  If it's all activity on all issues, you're effectively auto-subscribing to all issues, and really nobody would want that.  Well, maybe, like, 3 people.

Looking at docs for notification: https://help.github.com/en/github/receiving-notifications-about-activity-on-github/about-notifications#types-of-notifications

There are 4 levels:
- ignore all notifications including @mention
- notification on @mention or if participating (left a comment, owner of issue/PR)
- notification on releases + previous item
- get notification about *all* activity: every update in every issue/PR

However, there is such thing as teams: https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-organizations-and-teams/about-teams

We could create teams for front-end, back-ends, static analyzer and all other components to quickly summon all potentially interested people.


-----Original Message-----
From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2019 9:35 PM
To: James Y Knight <jyknight at google.com>; 'llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org' <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Switching from Bugzilla to Github Issues

> We do not want to build supplementary notification systems to make github issues send additional emails that it is unable to send itself. We will only support what GitHub supports. That means:
> - You can subscribe to notification emails for activity in the entire llvm-project repository.

Is that only new issues?  Or all activity?  If it's all activity on all issues, you're effectively auto-subscribing to all issues, and really nobody would want that.  Well, maybe, like, 3 people.

> - You can subscribe to notification emails on an individual issue.
> - Someone else can CC you on an individual issue to get your attention, and you will get notifications from that (unless you opt-out).
> - No emails will be sent to mailto:llvm-bugs at llvm.org for github issues.
> - There is no builtin way for users to subscribe to emails for bugs that have a given label (for example, all "clang" issues, or all x86 issues).

That last is really unfortunate.  Someone only interested in (say) LLDB issues would have to subscribe to all notifications and hope that there are enough breadcrumbs in a new issue to be able to do accurate email filtering.  It would be better to handle this in the bug tracker itself.
Last year Kristof Beyls and I did a BoF on bug handling, and my memory is that a nonzero number of people were willing to be auto-CC'd on particular topics but did not want to subscribe to llvm-bugs.  This description of the github tracker means that would not be feasible, which is a step backwards.
I can anticipate a counter-argument which is that someone can easily search for bugs with particular tags.  I claim that's not equivalent, because it requires action on the part of the person to go look for things, and that happens only when the person thinks of doing it.  Computers should automate the tedious parts, like alerting the people who are interested in issues with a particular tag.

--paulr