Triage guide

doc/source/development/index.rst

@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ Development
     :maxdepth: 2
 
     contributing
+    maintaining
     internals
     extending
     developer

doc/source/development/maintaining.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,172 @@
+.. _maintaining:
+
+******************
+Pandas Maintenance
+******************
+
+This guide is for pandas' maintainers. It may also be interesting to contributors
+looking to understand the pandas development process and what steps are necessary
+to become a maintainer.
+
+The main contributing guide is available at :ref:`contributing`.
+
+Roles
+-----
+
+Pandas uses two levels of permissions: **triage** and **core** team members.
+
+Triage members can label and close issues and pull requests.
+
+Core team members can label and close issues and pull request, and can merge
+pull requests.
+
+Tasks
+-----
+
+Pandas is largely a volunteer project, so these tasks shouldn't be read as
+"expectations" of triage and maintainers. Rather, they're general descriptions
+of what it means to be a maintainer.
+
+* Triage newly filed issues (see :ref:`maintaining.triage`)
+* Review newly opened pull request
+* Respond to updates on existing issues and pull requests
+* Drive discussion and decisions on stalled issues and pull requests
+
+.. _maintaining.triage:
+
+Issue Triage
+------------
+
+The issue tracker is many people's first interaction with the pandas project itself,
+beyond just using the library. As such, we want it to be a welcoming, pleasant
+experience.
+
+Here's a typical workflow for triaging a newly opened issue.
+
+1. **Is the necessary information provided?**
+
+   Ideally reporters would fill out the issue template, but many don't.
+   If crucial information (like the version of pandas they used), is missing
+   feel free to ask for that and label the issue with "Needs info".
+
+2. **Is this a duplicate issue?**
+
+   We have many open issues. If a new issue is clearly a duplicate, label the
+   new issue as "Duplicate" assign the milestone "No Action", and close the issue
+   with a link to the original issue. Make sure to still thank the reporter, and
+   encourage them to chime in on the original issue, and perhaps try to fix it.
+
+   If the new issue provides relevant information, such as a better or slightly
+   different example, add it to the original issue as a comment or an edit to
+   the original post.
+
+3. **Is the issue minimal and reproducible**?
+
+   For bug reports, we ask that the reporter provide a minimal reproducible
+   example. See http://matthewrocklin.com/blog/work/2018/02/28/minimal-bug-reports
+   for a good explanation. If the example is not reproducible, or if it's
+   *clearly* not minimal, feel free to ask the reporter if they can provide
+   and example or simplify the provided one. Do acknowledge that writing
+   minimal reproducible examples is hard work. If the reporter is struggling,
+   you can try to write one yourself and we'll edit the original post to include it.
+
+   If a reproducible example can't be provided, add the "Needs info" label.
+
+4. **Is this a clearly defined feature request?**
+
+   Generally, pandas prefers to discuss and design new features in issues, before
+   a pull request is made. Encourage the submitter to include a proposed API
+   for the new feature. Having them write a full docstring is a good way to
+   pin down specifics.
+
+   We'll need a discussion from several pandas maintainers before deciding whether
+   the proposal is in scope for pandas.
+
+5. **Is this a usage qusetion?**
+
+   We prefer that usage questions are asked on StackOverflow. If it's easy to
+   answer, feel free to link to the relevant documentation section, let them
+   know that in the future this kind of question should be on StackOverflow,
+   and close the issue.
+
+6. **What labels and milestones should I add?**
+
+   Apply the relevant labels. This is a bit of an art, and comes with experience.
+   Look at similar issues to get a feel for how things are labeled.
+
+   If there issue is clearly defined and the fix seems relatively straightforward,
+   label the issue as "Good first issue".
+
+   Typically, new issues will be assigned the "Contributions welcome" milestone,
+   unless it's know that this issue should be addressed in a specific release (say
+   because it's a large regression).
+
+.. _maintaining.closing:
+
+Closing Issues
+--------------
+
+Be delicate here: many people interpret closing an issue as us saying that the
+conversation is over. It's typically best to give the reporter some time to
+self-close their issue if it's determined that the behavior is not a bug,
+or the feature is out of scope. Sometimes reporters just go away though, and
+we'll close the issue after the conversation has died.
+
+Reviewing Pull Requests
+-----------------------
+
+Anybody can review a pull request: regular contributors, triagers, or core-team
+members. Here are some guidelines to check.
+
+* Tests should be in a sensible location.
+* New public APIs should be included somewhere in ``doc/source/reference/``.
+* New / changed API should use the ``versionadded`` or ``versionchanged`` directives in the docstring.
+* User-facing changes should have a whatsnew in the appropriate file.
+* Regression tests should reference the original GitHub issue number like ``# GH-1234``.
+
+Cleaning up old Issues
+----------------------
+
+Every open issue in pandas has a cost. Open issues make finding duplicates harder,
+and can make it harder to know what needs to be done in pandas. That said, closing
+issues isn't a goal on its own. Our goal is to make pandas the best it can be,
+and that's best done by ensuring that the quality of our open issues is high.
+
+Occasionally, bugs are fixed but the issue isn't linked to in the Pull Request.
+In these cases, comment that "This has been fixed, but could use a test." and
+label the issue as "Good First Issue".
+
+If an older issue doesn't follow our issue template, edit the original post to
+include a minimal example, the actual output, and the expected output. Uniformity
+in issue reports is valuable.
+
+If an older issue lacks a reproducible example, label it as "Needs Info" and
+ask them to provide one (or write one yourself if possible). If one isn't
+provide reasonably soon, close it according to the policies in :ref:`maintaining.closing`.
+
+Cleaning up old Pull Requests
+-----------------------------
+
+Occasionally, contributors are unable to finish off a pull request.
+If some time has passed (a week, say) since the last review requesting changes,
+gently ask if they're still interested in working on this. If another week or
+so passes with no response, thank them for their work and close the pull request.
+Comment on the original issue that "There's a stalled PR at #1234 that may be
+helpful.", and perhaps label the issue as "Good first issue" if the PR was relatively
+close to being accepted.
+
+Additionally, core-team members can push to contributors branches. This can be
+helpful for pushing an important PR across the line, or for fixing a small
+merge conflict.
+
+Becoming a pandas maintainer
+----------------------------
+
+The full process is outlined in our `governance documents`_. In summary,
+we're happy to give triage permissions to anyone who shows interest by
+being helpful on the issue tracker.
+
+The current list of core-team members is at
+https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas-governance/blob/master/people.md
+
+.. _governance documents: https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas-governance