Some Observations on the D Development Process

[Dmitry Olshansky]

On Friday, 5 January 2018 at 04:26:25 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/4/2018 9:44 AM, Jack Stouffer wrote:
>> DMD also has at least 30 PRs which have had no action from the 
>> author in over a year. There's no reason these should be kept 
>> open; they just take up auto-tester resources and lower the 
>> signal to noise ratio.
>> 
>> If the author comes back later, they can always ask a 
>> maintainer to reopen.
>
> I can't agree with the "just close older bugs and PRs." There's 
> good stuff in them. Even if the PR is no good, it provides 
> insight to someone working on a better fix. Closing it means 
> nobody will ever be aware of it or look at it again.

Sure, by surfing through 100-s of stalled PRs among real active 
work.

Somebodies archive currently is a burndown list of others. That 
can’t be good and is highly frustrating.

What I’m saying is that closing PR doesn’t evaporate it. Mark as 
stalled and close.
If someone is on treasure hunting, just click closed PRs and add 
‘stalled’ tag to search.

>
> Relying on the original author to revive it will not work.

Then by definition PR won’t get merged in the first place. It 
takes a fair amount of motivation and busy work by author even 
when all is good.

If we can’t merge it, why keep it around as OPEN?

>
> It's similar with older bugs. They still have discussion on 
> them that contributes valuable information and insight to 
> anyone wishing to work on it. Closing them with no action means 
> the information is all lost.

Piling them in bugzilla has the same downside - actionable items 
are intermingled with some “archived” and largely irrelevant 
non-actionable stuff. Bugzilla is though a lost case, so I will 
not suggest to move anything there.