Last week, we discussed the idea of consolidating some of the labels we use for issue management. The main goals of this effort are:
- Reduce the number of mis-tagged issues due to the confusion of which area labels should be applied
- Make the labels more clearly indicate which group/triage is responsible for tracking the filed issues
Considering the above goals, we are proposing to conslidate some existing labels into area-servers and update the scope of area-infrastructure.
Specifically:
This is a new area and will be owned by the Servers aka K-Core team. It will include all the functionality covered by the tags:
area-azure
area-caching
area-hosting
area-httpclientfactory
area-middleware
area-servers
area-websockets
part of area-platform
Issues that fall under these areas will continue to be triaged during the K-Core triage and replacement feature-* tags will be used for clarification and organization purposes. The features tags are optional and are not mandatory until triaged by the K-Core team. The features also ensure we don't lose granularity in organizing aspnetcore issues. Currently, some issues in area-platform are tagged as such since it affects aspnetcore as a whole. These issues will be tagged with area-servers without any specific feature tag. For example, dotnet/aspnetcore#27270
While there is some contention in using the name area-servers for this consolidated area, it was chosen for the following reasons
- It is general enough to encompass all of the merged areas but not overly so as to be ambiguous
- It matches with the labels used on stack-overflow
Alternatives considered:
Due to it being an existing label, it doesn't clearly communicate that it now contains more areas. Also, it's not immediately obvious that servers also includes issues affecting caching, hosting and httpclientfactory. However, due to the feedback we got with regards to area-aspnetcore, we're opting for this instead.
This is an overly general term and clashes with the repo name. It almost sounds like it should encompass all other areas instead of the ones listed above.
This is also an existing label and has the same fault as area-server. This label is also too general and platform may mean a number of different things to different people. Given that this is a public label, it's best to avoid terminology that can be ambiguous.
Runtime is something that has more significance for internal teams since we have a better understanding of how the .NET Runtime and SDK is organized. However, externally, area-runtime suffers the same issue as area-platform in being ambiguous and means different things to different people. To add to the confusion, other areas such as mvc and signalr are shipped in-box in the ASP.NET Core runtime.
This existing area will be owned by the Build v-team and be updated to include all the functionality covered by the current tags:
area-infrastructure
area-installers
part of area-platform
Issues that fall under these areas will be triaged during the Build standup. A replacement feature-installers will replace the area-installers tag. The issues in area-plaform that are categorized as mechanically more related to infrastructure will be moved into this area. For example, dotnet/aspnetcore#25917
The following areas will not change in content or ownership:
area-dataprotection
area-grpc
area-healthchecks
area-identity
area-signalr
area-blazor
area-commandlinetools
area-mvc
area-perf
area-razor.compiler
area-razor.tooling
area-security
Here are the known work items:
- Replacing or removing the obsoleted area labels as listed above and move issues into the consolidated areas
- Update internal documentation and triage queries with the new area/feature labels
- Update Hubbup and PR labeling automation
We discussed this among ourselves and we felt
area-servers
is a better name for the consolidated area label. I'm going to update the document.