I don’t think anyone is implying that the issue tracker is a complete mess, just that there is a bit room for improvement here. I don’t think the points being raised here are unreasonable.
I think most people understand that there are some issues that will never be fixed and nobody expects Nabu Casa to go out and buy a $3000 piece of hardware that only 3 people use to diagnose an issue (and if they do f’em). The generic thermostat issue I linked had nothing to do with hardware. The 5 year old TTS cutoff issue deals with very widely used and inexpensive Google Cast devices. Both were/are valid issues with multiple people experiencing them. A dev has never commented on either one. There are many issues like this.
The fact that some issues will not get fixed in a timely manner or not fixed at all is not the point we’re making here. What we are suggesting is that there could be better management, acknowledgement, and communication regarding the issues that users make the effort to open. If there actually are people dedicated to this task that is not readily apparent to the end user in my experience. I also think @finity has a point. Maybe a month focusing more on cleaning up old issues instead of new features wouldn’t be out of order.
Anyway, I’ve said my piece and cast my vote. If you don’t agree that issue tracker management could use a little improvement, we’ll have to agree to disagree. That being said, as always, your outstanding dedication, efforts, and contributions have always been appreciated!
A month of focusing on issues will not solve the problems in random integrations. At least once a year, the members (most active contributors) go through issues and fix what they can. IIRC we did a push back in July/august for this to reduce old & stale issues. In the end we still need to have these devices in order to fix them, or we need to have intimate knowledge of the integration. I know of many bugs right now that I could probably fix, however I’m not going to buy a product just to make that happen. On the other end of the spectrum, I know of other issues where the fix requires a total rewrite of an integration. I’m not going to do that. Expecting someone else to do that is a little entitled. Home assistant is still largely developed by volunteers, we aren’t going to do what we don’t want to do.
I’m currently going through a process to become the code-owner of the template entities integration and I’m performing a full overhaul. This will likely close many many old outstanding issues with it because the current code owners have been MIA. I personally don’t have the time to do more than this integration. This is just how the cookie crumbles. I’m sure there’s other people in the same situation as myself.
But we are not talking about random integrations. Those are core integrations. They are either supported and maintained or should’t be part of the core.
They are not. Core integrations have core listed as the code owner. Generic thermostat does not have an integration owner, neither does google translate (which handles the TTS).
You can find any codeowner by looking at the manifest file.
Honestly, I am a little befuddled at your response to this. Only because I feel as strongly as I do about this but also have the utmost respect your opinions am I making an effort to wrap my head around your sentiments on this WTH.
Again, the complaint here is NOT about any issues actually getting fixed. Nobody is asking anyone to buy or fix anything in this WTH, especially you. If you never did another thing for HA you already did more than your fair share. I also 100% understand why issues sometimes take a while to get fixed and why some never do. This WTH is about the user experience with issue reporting and how communication is managed on github from the user perspective.
Users are constantly encouraged to open issues in their logs, on the forums, discord etc.
A github account is required to report these issues. Many people reporting issues have to open a github account for this one and only reason. This is already a barrier many users must climb, particularly less techy newer users.
The user must go through some effort to report an issue (descriptions, versions, logs, diagnostics, screenshots etc). This is of course all very necessary, but none the less an effort on the user’s part, especially newer users who must learn about all these things. Also lot of users also have no idea what a “code owner” is and why they may not be looking at the issue. They just know they have an issue and they jumped through the required hoops to report it.
If the issue gets picked up right away, fantastic experience. No issues. But if the issue does not get noticed, the user is constantly asked to respond to a robot if they have any chance of getting their issue looked at someday. More effort on the user’s part.
Thankfully many users are willing to put in the effort required. I fail to see the entitlement in that user being disappointed if there has been no official response at all from to a valid 5 year issue they’ve kept open and that this experience can’t be improved upon in some way by the powers that be at HA and/or Nabu Casa. Even a note saying “Hey we hear you, but can’t work on this now because…” and maybe marking the issue as valid so it doesn’t keep going stale (at least for a much longer time) would be a great start.
We have dedicated mods for the forums and discord. I don’t think suggesting maybe something similar to triage and manage github issues is out of line, especially if it gives users someone “official” to pester instead of the busy code owners.
There are over 100 people who triage on github right now. ~90% members (volunteers), ~10% Nabu Casa employees. IIRC 2 NC employees are paid just to do issues & code reviews on PRs.
Not sure how making a WTH is going to fix the ‘lack of people’ problem and a ‘volunteers need to respond to the code they own’ problem.
It’s not. But it is going to open up a discussion about how reporting issues on github isn’t always the best experience for everyone and that perhaps there are things that could be done to improve it in some ways.
If there are dedicated people now looking at issues that is great. I’m assuming this is a newish thing relatively speaking and hopefully the fruits of their efforts will be realized in the future and maybe this WTH will become a moot point. Either way, I’m glad the discussion was had!
