Manage Issues and Pull Requests

New issues and pull requests are filed frequently, and how we respond to those issues directly affects the success of the project. Being part of the project team means helping to triage and address issues as they come in so the project can continue to run smoothly.

Things to Keep in Mind

Be nice. Even if the people are being rude or aggressive on an issue, you must be the mature one in the conversation as a project team member. Do your best to work with everyone no matter their style. Remember, poor wording choice can also be a sign of someone who doesn’t know English very well, so be sure to consider that when trying to determine the tone of someone’s message. Being rude, even when someone is being rude to you, reflects poorly on the team and the project as a whole.
Be inquisitive. Ask questions on the issue whenever something isn’t clear. Don’t assume you understand what’s being reported if there are details missing. Whenever you are unsure, it’s best to ask for more information.
Not all requests are equal. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to accommodate every request, so don’t be afraid to say that something doesn’t fit into the scope of the project or isn’t practical. It’s better to give such feedback if that’s the case.
Close when appropriate. Don’t be afraid to close issues that you don’t think will be done, or when it’s become clear from the conversation that there’s no further work to do. Issues can always be reopened if they are closed incorrectly, so feel free to close issues when appropriate. Just be sure to leave a comment explaining why the issue is being closed (if not closed by a commit).

Types of Issues and Pull Requests

There are five primary categories:

Bug: Something isn’t working the way it’s expected to work.
Enhancement: A change to something that already exists. For instance, adding a new option to an existing rule or fixing a bug in a rule where fixing it will result in the rule reporting more problems (in this case, use both “Bug” and “Enhancement”).
Feature: Adding something that doesn’t already exist. For example, adding a new rule, new formatter, or new command line flag.
Documentation: Adding, updating, or removing project documentation.
Question: An inquiry about how something works that won’t result in a code change. We prefer if people use GitHub Discussions or Discord for questions, but sometimes they’ll open an issue.

The first goal when evaluating an issue or pull request is to determine which category the issue falls into.

Triaging Process

All of ESLint’s issues and pull requests, across all GitHub repositories, are managed on our Triage Project. Please use the Triage project instead of the issues list when reviewing issues to determine what to work on. The Triage project has several columns:

Needs Triage: Issues and pull requests that have not yet been reviewed by anyone
Triaging: Issues and pull requests that someone has reviewed but has not been able to fully triage yet
Ready for Dev Team: Issues and pull requests that have been triaged and have all the information necessary for the dev team to take a look
Evaluating: The dev team is evaluating these issues and pull requests to determine whether to move forward or not
Feedback Needed: A team member is requesting more input from the rest of the team before proceeding
Waiting for RFC: The next step in the process is for an RFC to be written
RFC Opened: An RFC is opened to address these issues
Blocked: The issue can’t move forward due to some dependency
Ready to Implement: These issues have all the details necessary to start implementation
Implementing: There is an open pull request for each of these issues or this is a pull request that has been approved
Completed: The issue has been closed (either via pull request merge or by the team manually closing the issue)

We make every attempt to automate movement between as many columns as we can, but sometimes moving issues needs to be done manually.

When an Issue or Pull Request is Opened

When an issue or pull request is opened, it is automatically added to the “Needs Triage” column in the Triage project. These issues and pull requests need to be evaluated to determine the next steps. Anyone on the support team or dev team can follow these steps to properly triage issues.

Note: If an issue or pull request is in the “Triaging” column, that means someone is already triaging it, and you should let them finish. There’s no need to comment on issues or pull requests in the “Triaging” column unless someone asks for help.

The steps for triaging an issue or pull request are:

Move the issue or pull request from “Needs Triage” to “Triaging” in the Triage project.
Check: Has all the information in the issue template been provided?
- No: If information is missing from the issue template, or you can’t tell what is being requested, please ask the author to provide the missing information:
  - Add the “needs info” label to the issue so we know that this issue is stalled due to lack of information.
  - Don’t move on to other steps until the necessary information has been provided.
  - If the issue author hasn’t provided the necessary information after 7 days, please close the issue. The bot will add a comment stating that the issue was closed because there was information missing.
- Yes:
  - If the issue is actually a question (rather than something the dev team needs to change), please convert it to a discussion. You can continue the conversation as a discussion.
  - If the issue is reporting a bug, or if a pull request is fixing a bug, try to reproduce the issue following the instructions in the issue. If you can reproduce the bug, please add the “repro:yes” label. (The bot will automatically remove the “repro:needed” label.) If you can’t reproduce the bug, ask the author for more information about their environment or to clarify reproduction steps.
  - If the issue or pull request is reporting something that works as intended, please add the “works as intended” label and close the issue.
  - Please add labels describing the part of ESLint affected:
    - 3rd party plugin: Related to third-party functionality (plugins, parsers, rules, etc.)
    - build: Related to commands run during a build (testing, linting, release scripts, etc.)
    - cli: Related to command line input or output, or to CLIEngine
    - core: Related to internal APIs
    - documentation: Related to content on eslint.org
    - infrastructure: Related to resources needed for builds or deployment (VMs, CI tools, bots, etc.)
    - rule: Related to core rules
  - Please assign an initial priority based on the importance of the issue or pull request. If you’re not sure, use your best judgment. We can always change the priority later.
    - P1: Urgent and important, we need to address this immediately.
    - P2: Important but not urgent. Should be handled by a TSC member or reviewer.
    - P3: Nice to have but not important. Can be handled by any team member.
    - P4: A good idea that we’d like to have but may take a while for the team to get to it.
    - P5: A good idea that the core team can’t commit to. Will likely need to be done by an outside contributor.
  - Please assign an initial impact assessment (make your best guess):
    - Low: Doesn’t affect many users.
    - Medium: Affects most users or has a noticeable effect on user experience.
    - High: Affects a lot of users, is a breaking change, or otherwise will be very noticeable to users.
  - If you can’t properly triage the issue or pull request, move the issue back to the “Needs Triage” column in the Triage project so someone else can triage it.
  - If a pull request references an already accepted issue, move it to the “Implementing” column in the Triage project.
  - If you have triaged the issue, move the issue to the “Ready for Dev Team” column in the Triage project.

Evaluation Process

When an issue has been moved to the “Ready for Dev Team” column, any dev team member can pick up the issue to start evaluating it.

Move the issue into the “Evaluating” column.
Next steps:
- Bugs: If you can verify the bug, add the “accepted” label and ask if they would like to submit a pull request.
- New Rules: If you are willing to champion the rule (meaning you believe it should be included in ESLint core and you will take ownership of the process for including it), add a comment saying you will champion the issue, assign the issue to yourself, and follow the guidelines below.
- Rule Changes: If you are willing to champion the change and it would not be a breaking change (requiring a major version increment), add a comment saying that you will champion the issue, assign the issue to yourself, and follow the guidelines below.
- Breaking Changes: If you suspect or can verify that a change would be breaking, label it as “Breaking”.
- Duplicates: If you can verify the issue is a duplicate, add a comment mentioning the duplicate issue (such as, “Duplicate of #1234”) and close the issue.
Regardless of the above, always leave a comment. Don’t just add labels; engage with the person who opened the issue by asking a question (request more information if necessary) or stating your opinion of the issue. If it’s a verified bug, ask if the user would like to submit a pull request.
If the issue can’t be implemented because it needs an external dependency to be updated or needs to wait for another issue to be resolved, move the issue to the “Blocked” column.
If the issue has been accepted and an RFC is required as the next step, move the issue to the “Waiting for RFC” column and comment on the issue that an RFC is needed.

Note: “Good first issue” issues are intended to help new contributors feel welcome and empowered to make a contribution to ESLint. To ensure that new contributors are given a chance to work on these issues, issues labeled “good first issue” must be open for 30 days from the day the issue was labeled before a team member is permitted to work on them.

Accepting Issues and Pull Requests

Issues may be labeled as “accepted” when the issue is:

A bug that you’ve been able to reproduce and verify (i.e. you’re sure it’s a bug)
A new rule or rule change that you’re championing and consensus has been reached for its inclusion in the project

The “accepted” label will be added to other issues by a TSC member if it’s appropriate for the roadmap.

When an issue is accepted and implementation can begin, it should be moved to the “Ready to Implement” column.

Championing Issues

New rules and rule changes require a champion. As champion, it’s your job to:

Gain consensus from the ESLint team on inclusion
Guide the rule creation process until it’s complete (so only champion a rule that you have time to implement or help another contributor implement)

Once consensus has been reached on inclusion, add the “accepted” label. Optionally, add “help wanted” and “good first issue” labels, as necessary.

Consensus

Consensus is reached on issues when there are at least three team members who believe the change is a good idea and no one who believes the change is a bad idea. In order to indicate your support for an issue, leave a +1 reaction (thumbs up) on the original issue description in addition to any comments you might have.

When to Send to TSC

If consensus cannot be reached on an issue, or an issue’s progress has been stalled and it’s not clear if the issue should be closed, then you can refer the issue to the TSC for resolution. To do so, add the “tsc agenda” label to the issue and add a comment including the following information:

A one-paragraph summary of the discussion to this point. This should begin with “TSC Summary:”.
The question you would like the TSC to answer. This should begin with “TSC Question:”.

The issue will be discussed at the next TSC meeting and the resolution will be posted back to the issue.

Evaluating Core Features and Enhancements (TSC members only)

In addition to the above, changes to the core (including CLI changes) that would result in a minor or major version release must be approved by the TSC by standard TSC motion. Add the label “tsc agenda” to the issue and it will be discussed at the next TSC meeting. In general, requests should meet the following criteria to be considered:

The feature or enhancement is in scope for the project and should be added to the roadmap.
Someone is committed to including the change within the next year.
There is reasonable certainty about who will do the work.

When a suggestion is too ambitious or would take too much time to complete, it’s better not to accept the proposal. Stick to small, incremental changes and lay out a roadmap of where you’d like the project to go eventually. Don’t let the project get bogged down in big features that will take a long time to complete.

Breaking Changes: Be on the lookout for changes that would be breaking. Issues that represent breaking changes should be labeled as “breaking”.

When to Close an Issue

All team members are allowed to close issues depending on how the issue has been resolved.

Team members may close an issue immediately if:

The issue is a duplicate of an existing issue.
The issue is just a question and has been answered.

Team members may close an issue where the consensus is to not accept the issue after a waiting period (to ensure that other team members have a chance to review the issue before it is closed):

Wait 2 days if the issue was opened Monday through Friday.
Wait 3 days if the issue was opened on Saturday or Sunday.

In an effort to keep the issues backlog manageable, team members may also close an issue if the following conditions are met:

Unaccepted: Close after it has been open for 21 days, as these issues do not have enough support to move forward.
Accepted: Close after 90 days if no one from the team or the community is willing to step forward and own the work to complete to it.
Help wanted: Close after 90 days if it has not been completed.

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