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Re: Duplicates in the issue database

 

Hi Eeli-

It looks like the example you noted was a mistake. If it is marked a duplicate, you can click the "Closed (duplicate)" blue button at the top to follow to the base issue.

You can search for duplicate issues by selecting the "All" or "Closed" when you search. I'd really like to avoid recreating the GitLab functionality with labels. There are more features in GitLab that link to the "duplicate" mark that are useful. Specifically, in the base issue, we get a list of the duplicates that a developer can look over when creating their work package. The features involved in the work package are reviewed by the rest of the development team, which helps to ensure we catch the parts of the issue that are important to address.

Best-
Seth



On 2020-03-19 15:52, Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:

I have some questions and suggestions regarding duplicate issues in the gitlab issue database.

First, gitlab can mark issues as "duplicate". It will become " Closed (duplicated)". However, 1) there's no way to search for that status AFAIK, and 2) it can't be seen in the issues list (it's just Closed) and I have to open the issue to see if it was a duplicate or not.

Could it be possible to add a new label, "duplicate". It should then be added manually to the issues which are marked as duplicates. That way both 1) and 2) would be fixed.

Second, some larger questions.

What are the requirements for an issue to be marked as duplicate? Let's take a chain of issues as an example. (See https://forum.kicad.info/t/does-kicad-have-the-features-i-use-in-altium/21467/59?u=eelik where Jon's comment etc. was written after I drafted this mailing list message.)

In issue https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2163 Jeff says " Closing in favour of #2014 (closed)." However, this issue 2163 isn't marked as a duplicate. The main thrust of this report is a wish to add tenting (mask) option for each via.

In https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2014 we have "full stack for each via". This, in turn, was marked by Seth as a duplicate of https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2402. This 2402 is milestoned for v6 but is in the "future" roadmap and doesn't have an assignee.

I see some problems with this kind of issue chain.

1) It's difficult for the users (and the developers) to follow this chain and find related issues. An end user may want to find "via tenting" but it's closed (without actually being marked as a duplicate). Via tenting isn't mentioned at all in the final issue and not even in the middle issue.The intent of the original report has been lost in the issue chain.

2) If issues are closed and/or marked duplicates like this and they are difficult to track down, how can reporters know that their issues are actually being considered and remembered?

3) Can we be sure that when the final issue is fixed and closed that the original (closed as duplicate) issue has been solved? When the final issue is finally assigned to someone, can we know that this someone browses carefully through the issue chain and all related issues of all related issues to see if all the issues are really fixed, and the remaining issues are possibly re-opened? Can we be sure that in this example case Jeff, Seth and whoever will implement it in the future have understood it in the same way? There's no explicit information about the intentions of those who have made changes to the statuses of the reports.

(People's names are mentioned strictly only because they are real world examples, no further implications should be made about assumptions about anyone's intentions or working habits or anything else. Everyone has been doing good job.)

Does anyone else see these as problems?

I would suggest that if an issue is marked as a duplicate but it's not an exact duplicate or isn't self-evident - like exactly the same clearly defined bug reported by several users - the one who marks it as a duplicate would give an explanation. Then the developer who fixes an issue or closes it would be responsible for going back through all issue chains and carefully read all reports to see if they are actually fixed.

It would also help if gitlab had a way to mark relationships of issues in a more fine-grained way than just "related to". For example "supersedes" and "is superseded by". That could of course be done with a label and explanation comment. If an issue isn't actually a duplicate of another, but implementing another feature would include fixing this one or would make this one unnecessary, the bug could be marked as "superseded". IMO "duplicate" isn't a good label for an issue which is related but isn't actually a duplicate - duplicate would mean "this issue covers everything but nothing more than that other one", or at least so much that it's self-evident to whoever reads them.

The main point is that even the ordinary end users should be able to feel confident about the status of each issue when they read it.

Eeli Kaikkonen

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Seth Hillbrand
KiCad Services Corporation
https://www.kipro-pcb.com
+1 530 302 5483 | +1 212 603 9372


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