Hello, The backlog of ARROW issues currently stands at 2585 open issues [1]. The size of the backlog presents challenges to users and developers alike, and I believe the project would benefit from establishing guidance around issue handling. I'll be submitting a series of proposals for discussion, including this one focusing specifically on assigned issues that have gone dormant.
It's my belief that issue assignment implies the assignee is actively working on a task, or intends to start working on it in short order. In cases where well-intentioned developers are assigned tasks, but no progress is reported for extended periods of time, I propose that we unassign the issue and add a comment explaining why the action was taken. I believe any assigned issue that has been idle for 90 days or more is a good threshold to use, and that currently maps to 370 such issues [2], or 14% of the current backlog. (Note: 153 of those have not been updated in the past year.) I would also like to expand the existing "Report bugs and propose features" documentation [3] to cover issue handling in general, including the ask that assigned issues be actively worked within the 90 day period or be unassigned. In summary, here are the actions I propose: 1. Establish a threshold at which assigned, idle issues should be unassigned and comment added. 2. Define that threshold to be 90 days. 3. Document the above as a project policy for issue handling (PR against docs) 4. Automate 1 and 2 above. Thoughts on this? [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20ARROW%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved [2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20ARROW%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20%20AND%20assignee%20IS%20NOT%20EMPTY%20AND%20updated%20%3C%20-90d [3] https://arrow.apache.org/docs/developers/bug_reports.html Best regards, Todd Farmer
