[GHC] #15640: Add "difficulty" field to tickets

#15640: Add "difficulty" field to tickets -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: flip101 | Owner: hvr Type: feature | Status: new request | Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Trac & Git | Version: Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: Other | Type of failure: None/Unknown Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: Differential Rev(s): | Wiki Page: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- I propose to add a new field to tickets to indicate the difficulty of fixing a bug. This for three purposes: * The priority of the bug can be affected by the difficulty, thus making the difficulty visible as a field can be handy to set/affect the priority accordingly, example: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15579#comment:1 * Can be welcoming to newcomers who want to contribute to GHC to start with tickets with low priority. The new field should be searchable so they can get a list of all tickets with low difficulty * Can make work on GHC more efficient by doing more high-priority / low- difficulty bugs. This plays into pareto principle - 80/20 rule As for the actual levels, "easy" or "hard" is subjective. So i think it's a good idea to have levels according to some experience level somebody should have. I can imagine some bugs can only be squashed by a few or even one person, while others can be jumped on by people who have decent haskell experience (given they want to read the background of setting up GHC dev and such). One could then argue that this field should then be named "skill level needed", but i like difficulty more :) And this also allows for situations where the bug can be fixed only by a few people who are really knowledgeable about the matter but still find a need for different gradients of difficulty level. Maybe something like: * Very easy - new to haskell * Easy - need haskell experience * Medium - need a lot of haskell experience * Hard - need experience with GHC dev * Very Hard - as before + profiling/debugging tools + system knowledge * Very Hard - as before + specific compiling techniques * Very Hard - as before + need C skills (for RTS) * .. I'm not sure how and who can change the Trac settings, but the procedure for this is described on this page: https://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracTicketsCustomFields -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15640 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler

#15640: Add "difficulty" field to tickets -------------------------------------+----------------------------- Reporter: flip101 | Owner: hvr Type: feature request | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Trac & Git | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: Operating System: Unknown/Multiple | Architecture: Other Type of failure: None/Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | Differential Rev(s): Wiki Page: | -------------------------------------+----------------------------- Comment (by RyanGlScott): I could have sworn that there used to be a difficulty field. In fact, you can still see evidence that it once existed in this comment: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8560#comment:7 . Perhaps it just needs to be reenabled? -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15640#comment:1 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler

#15640: Add "difficulty" field to tickets -------------------------------------+----------------------------- Reporter: flip101 | Owner: hvr Type: feature request | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Trac & Git | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: Operating System: Unknown/Multiple | Architecture: Other Type of failure: None/Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | Differential Rev(s): Wiki Page: | -------------------------------------+----------------------------- Comment (by osa1): I 100% support this. I'm currently trying to contribute to another compiler (just to get a taste of it after about 4 years of GHC work) and one of the things I do is to filter "easy" tickets and pick one from there. Most of them are actually almost objectively easy, so while the "subjectivity" is a problem I think that's not a too serious one. I think most of the time an experienced GHC hacker could guess difficulty of a ticket quite accurately.
Can be welcoming to newcomers who want to contribute to GHC to start with tickets with low priority. The new field should be searchable so they can get a list of all tickets with low difficulty
One of the things we should stop doing is fixing easy problems ourselves instead of marking tickets as "easy" (and "newcomers"). I know I sometimes do this and looking at the tickets I see a lot of other cases too. We should let the new contributors do these tickets. Simply enabling the field won't be enough for new contributors if we don't have any such tickets (because they're all fixed by experienced contributors). OTOH some of the simple issues are also quite annoying to the person who discovered it (e.g. a problem in a debug output or an incorrect assertion) so sometimes it's hard to resist the temptation to fix it ourselves. This is especially a problem if it turns out we don't have enough contributors and simple tickets stay unfixed for weeks/months. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15640#comment:2 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler
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