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2025 Issue/PR Grooming - review, categorization, assignment

Open rebornix opened this issue 3 weeks ago • 2 comments

The number of issues that we receive every month across all our repositories is large enough so that despite our best efforts to triage and close issues we fall behind as soon as we carve out time for some focused, uninterrupted development time. Now it's the time to focus on housekeeping and bring our issue database into great shape. You can track our progress on https://joaomoreno.github.io/vscode-github-stats/.

Priorities for the December 2025 Housekeeping

  1. Review Issues - Bring our issue database back into great shape through categorization and cleanup
  2. Bug Reduction - Reduce the number of open bugs by fixing them

Note: Don't distract yourself with fixing issues if your part of the issue database is not yet in great shape. The review is strictly about categorization and cleanup. Our goal is to complete the review within the first 3 days.

@alexr00 @Yoyokrazy @benvillalobos are the champions for issue grooming. Champs are responsible for:

  • Present status and progress to keep the team informed
  • Identify engineers who are behind on issues and proactively reach out
  • Coordinate volunteers when some engineers finish their own issue grooming
  • Gate keeping: ensure no code changes are made during the review

Review Guidelines

Monday to Wednesday

In the first pass we review all issues across all our repositories. During review please make sure to:

  • Ensure each issue has a type label
  • Ensure each issue is assigned to a feature area
  • Close obsolete/fixed issues and mark duplicates as appropriate
  • Close out-of-scope feature requests with the *out-of-scope label. There is no value in keeping issues open that don't have any realistic chance of being addressed.
  • Close bugs as "won't fix" if there is a cost-benefit imbalance. It's not that we don't care about users who are affected by an issue but, for example, if the fix is so involved that we risk regressions for many, fixing is not a reasonable choice.
  • Area owners, label issues with team-low-hanging if they are a good candidate for another team member to investigate or fix during Bug Reduction.
    • NOTE: Use sparingly: only on issues that another team member could feasibly make a PR for without needing to ask too many questions, and only on issues that you really think should be worked on.

Otherwise the normal rules apply:

  • Assign the important label to issues that
    • result in data loss
    • break extensions
    • are critical security or performance issues
    • are UI issues that make a feature unusable
  • Issues that the community can take up should be labeled help-wanted
  • If issues are suitable for beginners, add the good-first-issue label and code pointers to help them get started with a PR
  • Feature requests that should be implemented as extensions should be labeled extensions-candidate and closed

If you joined the team within the last year and this is your first issue grooming, you might not own many feature areas yet. The general rule of thumb is to focus on your assigned issues first, then help your onboarding buddy. Lastly, reach out to the Issue Grooming Champions to help others.

Tools

Triage Extension

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-issue-triage-extension?tab=readme-ov-file#usage

Slash Commands

From the vscode GitHub repo, try the following slash commands:

  • /find-duplicates: Provide an issue, get potential duplicates of the given issue.
    • ℹ️ Requires gh CLI installed
  • /find-issue: Describe an issue, get existing issues that are similar to the description.
    • Try running this before filing a new bug
    • ℹ️ Follow the doc linked in the prompt file for setup steps

Bug Reduction

On Thursday, the team will review:

  • Progress and status of issue grooming across working/feature areas
  • Trajectory and priorities
  • Resource allocation - redeploy folks as needed based on priorities and workload

After the review is complete and resources are rebalanced, we move into bug reduction. Bugs you fix in December should be assigned to the December milestone.

Team member who have exhausted their bug reduction opportunities can move on to issues labeled team-low-hanging.

Tracking

Please make sure that you also housekeep in our satellite repositories.

Issues assigned to you

  • [ ] @aeschli
  • [ ] @aiday-mar
  • [ ] @alexdima
  • [ ] @alexr00
  • [ ] @amunger
  • [ ] @anthonykim1
  • [ ] @bamurtaugh
  • [ ] @benibenj
  • [ ] @benvillalobos
  • [ ] @bhavyaus
  • [ ] @binderjoe
  • [ ] @bpasero
  • [ ] @bryanchen-d
  • [ ] @chrmarti
  • [ ] @connor4312
  • [ ] @cwebster-99
  • [ ] @dbaeumer
  • [ ] @deepak1556
  • [ ] @devinvalenciano
  • [ ] @digitarald
  • [ ] @dileepyavan
  • [ ] @dineshc-msft
  • [x] @dmitrivMS
  • [ ] @DonJayamanne
  • [ ] @eleanorjboyd
  • [ ] @eli-w-king
  • [x] @hawkticehurst
  • [ ] @hediet
  • [ ] @isidorn
  • [ ] @jo-oikawa
  • [ ] @joaomoreno
  • [ ] @joshspicer
  • [ ] @jrieken
  • [x] @jruales
  • [ ] @jukasper
  • [ ] @justschen
  • [ ] @jytjyt05
  • [ ] @karthiknadig
  • [ ] @kieferrm
  • [ ] @kycutler
  • [ ] @lramos15
  • [x] @lszomoru
  • [ ] @meganrogge
  • [ ] @mjbvz
  • [ ] @mrleemurray
  • [ ] @ntrogh
  • [ ] @osortega
  • [ ] @pierceboggan
  • [ ] @pwang347
  • [ ] @rebornix
  • [ ] @roblourens
  • [x] @rwoll
  • [ ] @rzhao271
  • [ ] @sandy081
  • [ ] @sbatten
  • [ ] @TylerLeonhardt
  • [ ] @Tyriar
  • [ ] @ulugbekna
  • [ ] @unthinkmedia
  • [ ] @vijayupadya
  • [ ] @Yoyokrazy
  • [ ] @zhichli

Issues assigned to feature areas but without owner

Satellite repositories

Other issues

  • [ ] ensure we don't have any issues assigned to people who are no longer on the team @rebornix

rebornix avatar Dec 03 '25 18:12 rebornix

Help Wanted (@example)

Instructions

  • Mark bug only if repros
  • Anything about X gets closed out of scope

Areas to help with

  • [ ] chat
  • [x] terminal (claimed by @example)
  • [x] etc. (claimed by @example) ✅

benvillalobos avatar Dec 08 '25 06:12 benvillalobos

Help Wanted on Unknown issues

Unless otherwise specified, these are issues that need to be:

  • Deduped
    • Check for closed issues.
  • Labeled bug or feature-request
    • If bug and the version is old: try to confirm if the issue still exists in the current version.
    • There are some places we have known triage steps that anyone can follow, such as perf. If the issue looks like one of these areas, follow the appropriate steps.

If you have spare time/enthusiasm, feel free to apply area labels, though priority is type labels (bug | feature)

Grab a query and dive in!

alexr00 avatar Dec 08 '25 09:12 alexr00