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Andrey
Andrey

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A GitHub issue report which makes you happy

I have processed many tickets in various issue tracking systems in my life. I prefer to categorize tickets to one or more of the following types:

  • Feature request: for an open source project it is a great indicator that a project is wanted and new features drive the growth. No new features are added without an effort.
  • Bug report: well, it has to be addressed. And I follow the philosophy that bug reports should be addressed at higher priority than features. No bugs are fixed without an effort.
  • Question (or Misunderstanding reported as a bug): these usually highlight gaps in documentation (or unintuitive API / behavior). Users have to be guided and usually questions are answered by directing to an existing documentation, or documentation is improved as a result of a ticket. I do not like to receive the same question multiple times, so I try to improve documentation at higher priority than features. This type of ticket also requires the effort and time of a developer.

All of the above types of tickets require attention of project developers, and time and effort to address.

However, today I received an issue report which did not require me to do anything about. It does not fall in any of the above categories. At the same time, I was happy this was submitted. The ticket is #220 for Hookstate library, which I believe is one of the best state management libraries for React. And the ticket's title is "Just want to share how much I love this library and how much time it has saved me".

Fortunately, GitHub issue tracker does not have a mandatory field "Close reason", like (most of?) all JIRA-based trackers. So, I can just close it.

However, I think closing it without an action would be rude :) So, I have decided to give it time in the form of writing this little post.

How do you categorize tickets of a similar kind? And what action do you take before closing them?

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Junxiao Shi • Edited

I received a similar issue, on a library I put together in a weekend:
github.com/yoursunny/esp-fipsy/iss...