Too many open issues

[kaitlynia]

I'm browsing open issues now and it seems (beyond the major triage label being the only significant signal here) that there are many stale issues that either have an ambiguous scope (with no discussion in 2 years) or are solved/superceded/covered by another issue.

Can anything be done about this? I am willing to put in the work to sift through them, but only if maintainers agree something should be.

[kaitlynia]

Seems as well that only the first couple pages have type labels, I could also help with that :D

[usfbih8u]

#3801 (reply in thread)

[kaitlynia]

Thanks for directing me there! I'll close this discussion

[usfbih8u]

You can make a small list like I did, if you want—the items I posted were addressed—and then wait for feedback from the maintainers.

That said, the project doesn’t have the manpower to handle every issue that’s reported, and people often forget to close their issues. Using a bot to close older issues could be another approach.

[usfbih8u]

@dmaluka, @JoeKar. Some quick drive-by issues to close (only short/easy issues to review):

I do not know whether @Andriamanitra's offer is still on the table, but since he has answered a lot of the issues, a “promotion” would make sense 😁. This way, issues can be closed or resolved directly.

Close

• Add syntax for Lova Language #4158 syntax for his 3 commits language
• Allow use Ctrl-w in search commands #3202
• [Feature request] Editor update option #3158 I honestly do not like these kinds of update notifications, and many people probably delegate updates to their distribution.

Solved question/issue but not closed

• Calling clipboard.Write in lua crashes micro  #3320 oopsies, but solved with a plugin by Neko
• Micro ignores external plugins. #3117
• How to Exit Micro Using a Single KeyPress, When Several Tabs are Open #2788 QuitAll does that
• Can't Use keybinding with alt and shift #2749
• Lua Error: function does not exist #3928
• How can I switch the text charset? #3169 solved not closed
• Suggestion: **side-by-side** diff panels #3854
• [Feature Request] Declarative plugins for easy dotfiles management #3843 ...
• XHTML? #3421 author missing in action
• Disable text autocompletions #3269 solved + missing author
• Linter Extend Tutorial #3274 solved
• nzw  #3160 crash can't reproduce; dmaluka points some issues with Unsplit() but I dont know if it is resolved.
• [question] How to close all splits except the current one? #2996 not closed
• [Feature Request] Live Markdown Preview #2994 solved/plugin land/not planned
• How can I mark select text? #2990 ~solved
• [Feature Request] Option to toggle readonly (at least for current buffer) #3150 non issue
• How can I make micro look like Nano (with colors)? #3028 solve?!
• Micro places compiled Java programs into incorrect directory when auto-compiling #3412 solved? java issue? Andriamanitra
• Colored comments #2800 can be done with syntax (sadly, not globally) and colorschemes

Out of scope/Not planned

• how to input nano keybinds into micro? #3409 suggestion rejected
• flathub package out of date #2980 flatpack
• Add Ballerina syntax highlighting #2969 ballerina syntax...
• termux user problem #2801 ancient times...
• [suggestion] micro should have a subreddit #3004 reddit...
• Feature request: Autoclosing of html tags #3168 plugin land
• support elastic tabstops #3920 Not planned?
• Feature Request: Native Nerd Fonts support for Statusline and Filemanager #3993 as Andriamanitra and Neko said already possible.
• Bump Golang version #3462 probably done by now
• Ask before over-saving binary file #4047 out of scope
• Option for global config? #3525 not planned
• Option to disable plugins #4147 plugins can be malicious or something

[JoeKar]

@niten94 & @Neko-Box-Coder
Hands up in case you like to spend some free-/lifetime for micro in triaging some issues.

@kaitlynia
I'd be reluctant to make that decision on my own if it involves someone who hasn't contributed to micro very often so far.
Please don't take that the wrong way.
@dmaluka
What is your opinion? Currently we are fighting against windmills.

[Neko-Box-Coder]

Thanks @usfbih8u , respect/appreciate for curating the list 👍

@JoeKar @dmaluka
Maybe we can add the ability to close issues to people that lurks in the issues/discussions regularly, like @Andriamanitra or @niten94 maybe (If you guys want to, that is)?

I am only chiming in occasionally but happy to be on the list as well.

FYI, I also lurk in gitter chat regularly in case anyone needs help. (and will be for discord, have only joined just now)

Do we want to setup a bot to mark issues as stale (and leave a comment) after certain amount of time (say a year), and close it automatically after certain amount of time? (say 2 weeks?) Otherwise the number of issues will just keep growing...

As for the list,

• Calling clipboard.Write in lua crashes micro  #3320 I just closed it, thanks for reminding me.
• nzw  #3160 Probably not relevant (and fixed) anymore after Fixing missing case for handling root node for splitting #3983 and Fixing resize split can cause crashes when node is root #4139
• How can I mark select text? #2990 Added a comment where a plugin does this already.

[JoeKar]

Maybe we can add the ability to close issues to people that lurks in the issues/discussions regularly, like @Andriamanitra or @niten94 maybe (If you guys want to, that is)?

Yes, this is what the new owner of the triage role can do.

Do we want to setup a bot to mark issues as stale (and leave a comment) after certain amount of time (say a year), and close it automatically after certain amount of time?

I thought about this already a couple of times, but came every time to the same downside of closing potential valid issues.
Maybe that can be prevented in the moment it is triaged. 🤔

Otherwise the number of issues will just keep growing...

Perhaps we should give a bot like this a go, as other repositories are already doing, to get the situation under control.

[Andriamanitra]

I don't like the idea of automatically closing issues. I've only just started going through them and I've already encountered a couple of very old ones that I confirmed are still valid (and many more that I've not been confident enough about to close as invalid).

As long as we make sure to close more issues than are opened each day we should be able to get the situation under control eventually.

[Neko-Box-Coder]

Yes, this is what the new owner of the triage role can do.

I have no idea who has what permission in this repo (apart from you 2 that has the maintainer one, don't know how to figure out as well). But yeah, adding more people that can (look into and) close issues would be a good start.

As long as we make sure to close more issues than are opened each day we should be able to get the situation under control eventually.

Yeah fair enough actually. The frequency of new issues is not that high to be fair, so I guess having more people looking into them would be good for now?

[Andriamanitra]

I've started going through the issue tracker and adding labels. My system has been to sort unlabeled issues from oldest to newest, convert questions to Q&A discussions, close duplicates and ones that are already fixed, skip ones that I don't understand (but seem reasonable), and add enhancement/bug labels to the rest (valid issues).

I have a few thoughts / questions about our labeling system:

1. I'm not sure what the difference between feature and enhancement is supposed to be, maybe we could combine them?
2. Introducing new labels for specific subsystems (eg. plugin, syntax-highlighting, clipboard ¹) would help me organize the issues.
3. question is somewhat redundant if the plan is to convert all questions into discussions under Q&A category.
4. duplicate has never been used (I don't see a point in adding it if I'm already closing issue as duplicate).
5. in progress has never been used as far as I know. (Should we start using it? Or remove it?)
6. I've encountered a number of old issues that are clearly actionable and deserving of some attention, should there be a label for that? (Or should I simply use help wanted?) For example:
   1. Mouse selection wrapping #677
   2. Enhancement: wrap selection with (, [, { #707
   3. Ambiguous characters map to full-width characters in East Asian locale #1124
   4. Emoji causes quote to be stuck on screen when scrolling #3792

@JoeKar @dmaluka do you have any preferences here (I can't remove/add new kind of label myself)?

Footnotes

1. The search "clipboard" currently finds 59 open issues, and I'm not looking forward to figuring out which ones are duplicates of each other. 🫠 https://github.com/micro-editor/micro/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20clipboard ↩

[JoeKar]

In general:
The most of the labels are created long time before we started to take over. :)

1. I think so. One should be enough. If we use the feature template, then feature is added as label.
2. If it helps, sure why not.
3. It helps, when the work is split and not done immediately. A few days ago you labeled them as question and I moved them to the Q&A.
4. Yep, here closing the whole issue as a duplicate seems preferable.
5. It only helps in case it is used by us and since we did not use them -> vote for removal.
6. help wanted sounds feasible.

[Andriamanitra]

A few days ago you labeled them as question and I moved them to the Q&A.

Yeah, I noticed that so I started converting them to discussions myself instead of just labeling them 😄

[JoeKar]

I did a small cleanup and added your proposed labels.