Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Create chapter about rust-lang/rust issue triaging #716

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
Dec 26, 2023
Merged
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from 1 commit
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions src/SUMMARY.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -103,6 +103,7 @@
- [Release Process](./release/process.md)
- [Rollup Procedure](./release/rollups.md)
- [Triage Procedure](./release/triage-procedure.md)
- [Issue Triaging](./release/issue-triaging.md)
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
- [Triaging Crater Runs](./release/crater.md)
- [Archive](./archive/README.md)
- [Friends of the Tree](./archive/fott.md)
Expand Down
80 changes: 80 additions & 0 deletions src/release/issue-triaging.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
# Issue triaging

This page is about the `rust-lang/rust` repository. Other repositories may have different processes.

Tracking issues (label `C-tracking-issue`) don't fit into this procedure and are treated differently.

## Motivation

The `rust-lang/rust` repository has thousands of issues and hundreds of people working on it.
It is impossible for all people to check and solve issues. The goals of triaging are connecting
issues to the relevant people, and helping them be more effective at fixing the issue.

In practice, it is unrealistic for all issues to be solved quickly and found the by right people.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
Through applications of labels we make the issue tracker more searchable for future reference,
so that people in the future have an easier time finding related issues or issues they are interested
in working on.

Triaging can be done by **everyone**, no matter your permissions. We encourage everyone to help here,
as triaging work is highly parallelizable and easy to get started with.

## Initial triaging

When an issue is opened, it gets the `needs-triage` label. This ensures that every issue gets an initial
look and that no issue is forgotten, or that when it is forgotten, it is at least visibly forgotten by still having the label.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

`needs-triage` is an initial checkpoint. The effort needed to get an issue past the label should be minimal.

To do the initial triage and remove the `needs-triage` label, the following conditions should be fulfilled/considered.
It's okay if not all of these are always considered, treat it as guideline, not a hard check list. It is also not exhaustive.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

- The issue should make sense, that is it should present a problem.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
- For example, if an issue is a question about Rust in general, the issue should be closed and the user redicted to URLO/Discord.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
You can of course answer the question too :) (but make sure to mention that the user should go to URLO/Discord next time).
- Add appropriate labels ([Labels](#labels))
- Specifically, `T-*` and `C-*` are the most relevant
- If the issue contains no reproduction but needs one, ask for one and add the `S-needs-repro` label
- If the issue could benefit from bisecting the regression, add `E-needs-bisection` (or do the bisection yourself)
- Does this issue require nightly? Add `requires-nightly`.
- Is the issue a regression? Apply the `regression-untriaged` label (or figure out what regression it is exactly)
- If you happen to know people who this issue is relevant to, ping them.
- For example, write `cc @ThatPerson` if `ThatPerson` has been working a lot on the problematic feature recently
- Does this issue require incomplete or internal features? Add `requires-{incomplete,internal}-features`.

For applying and removing labels, unprivileged users can use rustbot.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
For example, `@rustbot label +T-compiler +C-bug +A-linkage +O-macos -needs-triage`.

To see a list of all labels, check out the "labels" page next to the search bar in the issue tracker.

## Further triaging
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

For issues that have been through the initial triaging step (that is, don't have the `needs-triage` label anymore), there are usually
still things that can be improved. There are often many more labels that could be applied (using rustbot again if you don't have privileges).

Additionally, old (there is no clear definition of old yet, but something on the order of months) `S-needs-repro` issues can be closed
if there is no way to make progress without a reproduction. This requires privileges, but if you don't have them, you can just link the issue
on Zulip (for example in `t-release/triage` or `general`) and someone with privileges can close it for you.

Another useful thing to do is go through `E-needs-mcve` and `E-needs-bisection` issues and creating minimizations or bisecting the issue
(using [cargo-bisect-rustc](`https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo-bisect-rustc`)). When you provide one, you can also remove the label
using rustbot (`@rustbot label -E-needs-bisection`).

## Labels
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

There are many different labels that can be applied to issues.

- `needs-triage`: signals that an issue is new and needs initial triage
- `T-*`: Specifies the team or teams that this issue is relevant to, for example compiler, types or libs
- `C-*`: Specifies the category of the label, for example a bug, tracking issue or discussion
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
- `O-*`: For platform-specific issues, specifies the platform (architecture or operating system). For example macos, aarch64, windows
- `A-*`: The areas that the issue is relevant to, for example linkage, patterns, diagnostics
- `F-*`: When the issue concerns a specific (usually unstable) feature
- `requires-nightly`: This issue is not relevant to the stable compiler
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
- `requires-{incomplete,internal}-features`: This issue requires an incomplete or internal feature. The latter often means that the issue
should be closed in accordance with compiler [MCP 620](https://github.com/rust-lang/compiler-team/issues/620).
- `regression-*`: Labels for tracking issues that are regressions.
- `D-*`: Labels for diagnostics issue.
- `I-*`: Different labels about the nature (originally, importance) of a bug. For example ICE, slow code, heavy code, crashes, unsoundness.
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
- `P-*`: Priority labels. Applied using the [Compiler Prioritization procedure](../compiler/prioritization.md)
- `S-*`: The status of an issue, for example S-needs-repro.
- `E-*`: Calls for participation, for example to minimize an issue (E-needs-mcve) or because there is mentoring available (E-mentor).
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
Noratrieb marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved