Re: List of Issues with 'patch_abandoned' assigned to them - as of September 2015

[James Lowe]

Hello,

On 20/09/15 15:01, David Kastrup wrote:
> James Lowe <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>>    Hello,
>>    As part of the 'Patch Meister's' role, I present the following list of
>>    all issues currently marked as 'patch_abandoned'.
>>    I've grouped them into their patch 'Status' fields and then shown the
>>    date that the last time the issue was updated.
>>    For those that cannot remember, Issue classification definitions are
>>    here:
>>    [1]http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/contributor-big-page#iss
>>    ue-classification
>>    We should make some decision on what to do with these. In my opinion,
>>    the very least we should change the status to either 'new', 'invalid'
>>    or 'blank'. My own feeling that we not use the 'patch_abandoned' label
>>    anymore, in that if an Issue is 'abandoned', it is usually abandoned
>>    because of
>>    i. Dev has no more time or has given up working on the patch for a
>>    'started' issue - perhaps set issue back to 'new' and remove patch
>>    status label; but put a note in the thread that the patch was
>>    abandoned.
>>    ii. The issue has been shown to no longer be applicable (because of a
>>    change in either the code base, or for example in the case of trying to
>>    support some deprecated third-party code - like an OS or Browser etc.)
>>    In which case this should probably be changed to 'Invalid' and be done.
>>    Other than those two (variations on a theme) I cannot think of anything
>>    other case.
> 
> A whole bunch of the issues you have below are for Duplicate, Invalid,
> or independently Fixed issues.  An abandoned patch is natural to go with
> that and should not require any additional action.  It's only for open
> issues that an abandoned patch might form a point of reference.
> 
> The only suspicious combination is an abandoned patch for a Started
> issue where the issue owner is the same person responsible for the
> patch.  That's likely an oversight (or the owner tried to work on a
> different patch and lost track at some point of time).  So basically
> I don't think abandoned patches require any action of their own.
> "Started" issues may independently be considered as not being worked on
> after a considerable amount of time.  In that case, it might get
> disowned, reset to "Accepted" (when it's still relevant) and _possibly_
> any existing patch may be marked "abandoned" in that process.
> 
> But I don't think that any patch already marked "abandoned" necessitates
> any further action on its own.
> 

My thinking is like this; I pick an issue to work on, I do some stuff,
make a patch, have a discussion, then get bored and go silent.

The issue is now patch_abandoned.

What is the benefit of leaving this label (or even having it in the
first place) as anyone new who wanted to look for an issue would have to
start from square 1 anyway or pick up where someone left off (i.e. start
from square 2 so to speak), so how is this different from 'Accepted'
with no patch label as long as 'someone' (i.e. the Patch Meister)
updated the issue tracker with some words?

In other words what is the difference between an issue that has had a
patch abandoned for 2 years to an issue that has never been started but
has been accepted?

Assuming the issue is valid of course?

James