jbenet / jbenet/random-ideas

JRFC 37 - Dependencies on Github

Open
#37 30 comments 12 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
No language data
Stars
328
Forks
12
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

# Adding Dependencies to Github Issues

This is an old idea, many people have had it. I'm just laying out here as a point for discussion, so that we can build it.
## Desires
- I would like to be able to link github issues to each other with a "depends on" relationship.
- I want graphs like this:
![](https://trac-hacks.org/raw-attachment/wiki/TracTicketDepgraphPlugin/TracTicketDepgraphPlugin-Screenshot.jpg)
- It wont happen on github core: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/210
- I want gantt charts
## Proposal
### 1. Parse Dependencies from Comments

We can parse comments in an issue and detect text like:

```
Depends on https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/100
```

To make the dependency graph explicit. Then we can create a tool (or a site like waffle.io) that crawls a repo's issues.
### 2. Put dependencies on ipfs

Take the crawled dependencies and put them on IPFS (dag base)
### 3. Generate visual graphs

Use tools like graphviz to visualize dependency graphs.
### 4. Webapp showing deps

We can make a webapp that shows dependency graphs for:
- a single gtihub issue
- a selcted set of github issues (github search)
- a github label
- a github milestone
- a github repo
- a github org

(Note that if we implement support based on running github searches, we get most of these for free.)
### Other Considerations
- Tool/site should be able to crawl a set of orgs (all repos), or a set of repos.
- Tool should show what's done (green), ready to be worked on (yellow), what's blocked by a dependency (red), etc. (See how other tools figure out the state / info to show)
- Security: option to only look at the main issue comment/post (first, top). This way people can't troll an issue adding bogus dependencies. Requires admin powers to edit the main issue post and add the dependencies there.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.