Issue Tracking

This page describes how we track issues in the vscode repository.

Inbox tracking and Issue triage

New issues or pull requests submitted by the community are triaged by a team member. The team rotates the inbox tracker on a weekly basis.

Inbox Tracking

The Inbox query contains all the

• open issues or pull requests that
• are not feature requests and
• have no owner assignment.

The inbox tracker should do the following initial triage:

• Is the issue invalid? Close it and justify the reason.
• Is the issue a general question, like How can I compile TypeScript? Close it and redirect the user to Stack Overflow with this message.
• Else, assign the issue to an owner.

Everyone should do the following secondary triage to their assigned issues (the inbox tracker may do some of these steps too, if obvious):

• If an issue needs more info, assign the needs more info and ask for more information in a comment.
• If the issue is a bug, add the bug label.
• If the issue is a feature request, add the label feature request and @-mention if someone from the team should be aware of the feature request.
• If needed, edit the title to improve it.
• If possible, assign the issue with a feature/topic area label.
• If the issue is important, assign an important label and optionally mention @microsoft/vscode to get the attention of the entire team.
• If the issue needs to be fixed in this release, assign it to the current milestone (eg: blocks a scenario, completes a new feature, etc.). Else, assign it to the Backlog.
• If needed, follow-up with the author.

The person assigned to do the inbox tracking does not have to (unless they want to):

• Perform a duplicate search
• Engage into a discussion with the author of the issue and ask for more information

Fix planning

At the beginning of the endgame we review the open issues and adjust the milestone if needed, moving to the next milestone or back to the backlog.

At the beginning of the debt week we review the issues, pull requests assigned to the backlog milestone, and assign the ones we want to address to the current milestone.

Filing bugs as development team member

When team members files a bug they perform steps of the inbox tracker for the issue they filed. Therefore bugs filed by the development team do not need to be triged by the inbox tracker.

Bug Verification

Bugs need to be verified.

• Once a bug is fixed its state is changed to closed
• If it needs verification, assign it to another team member
• Once verified, label the issue with verified

Tip: To see what bugs you need to verify, create a personal query: current milestone, assigned to me, closed, -label:"verified"

Duplicates

Duplicate bugs are closed with a comment duplicates #issue. Please try to reference an earlier issue unless a later issue is more appropriate (has more context, better scenarios, repro steps, etc.).

Moving issues to another repository

Use the issue mover tool to move bugs to another repository.

Consistent labels across vscode repositories

Visual Studio Code consists of multiple repositories and we should use consistent work flows and labels across all our repositories.

To establish consistent labels across all our repositories use the Label Manager tool.

Consistent milestones across vscode repositories

To enable planning across repositories all the Visual Studio Code related repositories need to define the same milestones.

Iteration Planning

We use issues for iteration plans and test plans:

• Iteration Plans have a label iteration-plan with tasks [ ] for the different items. The individual items are tracked in existing issues (bugs, feature requests). If there is no existing issue then a new issue with the label plan-item is created. Here is an example.
• Test Plans have a label test-plan, here is an example.