26 Sep
2016
26 Sep
'16
8:28 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, Manuel,
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Manuel Smeria <manuel(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Hello Devs,
I would like to propose a new best practice for the way we close issues
as
Duplicate.
As an example I've reported this issue:
http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13728 which was later closed as a
Duplicate to http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13729.
From my perspective, this is not correct since the issue I reported is
valid from an user's POV.
I would have preferred that my issue was renamed and that developers
would
have added some technical information as a
comment to it if they wanted
to
do so.
It just doesn't make any sense to me to close a perfectly valid issue as
a
Duplicate just to create another one that has a
more technically correct
summary and description.
It also doesn't make sense to close the original issue as a Duplicate to
a
duplicate issue :) (pun intended)
I see things like this: my issue's description is a use-case of the issue
later reported by Edy, so if anything, Edy's issue should be closed as a
Duplicate to mine and not the other way around.
As you have explained it yourself, the issue you have
created is a
*usecase*, a *manifestation* of a real problem. That is why we have
identified the real problem (the "cause") and I have created an issue to
specifically address it and fix it, linking your manifestation issue to the
actual problem that caused it. A developer will work to fix the actual
problem, and not its many manifestations. This way, in the issues tracker
(jira), we will have recorded both the actual problem and one (or many) of
its manifestations so that, when a user (or even a dev) does a search for a
manifestation, it will be easy to find the actual problem he is having
(manifestation), but also the real problem that caused it (and when it was
fixed).
The users will always report the manifestation of a problem. They report
what they see. They don't investigate. Following your practice would mean
closing all user-reported issues as duplicate once the developer finds the
real cause. I don't think this is right. Moreover, AFAIK the best practice
when reporting issues, even for developers, is to describe the
manifestation in the issue title. What's important is to understand how the
users are affected. The developer can look for details (like the cause of
the problem) in the comments.
Thanks,
Marius
If we were to modify the manifestation issue or simply add a comment, we
would lose all the above mentioned information, which would not be ideal,
so, instead, even if it breaks a bit the chronology of things, we mark the
manifestation issue as a duplicate of the "cause" issue, which makes
perfect sense when you look at it this way. Fixing the cause will
automatically fix all reported manifestations which were clearly marked as
duplicates of the cause.
So, in practice, when there are more opened issues that are clearly
duplicates, the one with the most information and that best identifies the
real source of the problem is left opened, while all the others which are
addressing manifestations get closed as duplicates of the previous one,
even if that issue happened to be reported later in the chronology.
One scenario where I think issues dated previously should be closed as
Duplicate is if the new issue has already been fixed. For example when a
Developer doesn't notice an older issue and starts working on the new one
instead of closing the new one as a Duplicate and work on the older one.
There might be more, feel free to add them to this thread.
Yes, we do that already.
So, what I propose is that we don't close original issues as Duplicate
unless it falls into the category previously described or some other
exceptions that I can't think of now and might occur.
As I mentioned, the "original" issue is less valuable both to users and to
devs as an identified "cause" issue, which really needs fixing.
"Original"
issues still offer value to users when searching or reading release notes,
but that`s as far as it can go.
Does this make sense?
Thanks,
Eduard
Thanks,
Manuel
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