Out of sight out of mind

[Andrew Edwards via Digitalmars-d]

Observe the following truths:
     1) Issue tricking and resolution are kept separate in our community
     2) That which is not visible garners no attention

Presently, we file bugs/issues through issues.dlang.org, the maintenance 
of which is no small task and is certainly appreciated. However, it is 
an environment completely detached from where the actual work is 
performed. As such, it breeds neglect on the part of the developers: not 
because they do not care, but rather because they do not see.

Take issue #143 for instance. It is the oldest open issue on the DLang 
Issue Tracking System. Submitted by Jarrett Billingsley on May 17, 2006, 
it received one comment two days later but was ignored for four years 
before Michal Minich made the second comment. Another two years went by 
before Martin Nowak addressed the issue, which Walter promptly reverted 
(reason unknown). The end result? Eight years flew by and the issue 
remains unresolved.

This happens because we have two separate systems (one tracking 
problems, another tracking the resolution), both of which compete for 
the same precious and extremely limited resource: the volunteer time of 
developers.

Already proven a valuable resource, GitHub offers the tools necessary to 
resolve this problem. The "issues" feature (not currently activated for 
any D-Programming-Language repo) allows us to set milestones (with due 
dates), assign tasks, and create and apply labels (multiple where required).

Observe the following:

	https://github.com/AndrewEdwards/druntime/issues?state=open

Note how quickly you can see the total number of open issues, traverse 
to any category, and identify what is important for a given milestone. 
We can even track our progress toward a specific milestone in seconds, 
or which issues we created or was assigned to us.

By using this feature, we will eliminate the fire and forget problem 
currently observed with Bugzilla. We will be able to automatically link 
resolution to issue, by a mere mention of the issue number within the 
resolution. Issues become far more visible and, consequently, are not so 
easily forgotten.

A complete win in my book.

-Andrew