A user posted a comment to an existing issue on one of my GitHub repos and his comment should really have been added as a new issue. There is now a whole mini-thread that is misplaced. Is there any way to move these comments to a different issue? I've seen a number of questions on moving issues amongst GitHub repos, etc, but haven't been able to find anything on moving comments.
You can "Reference in new issue" clicking on the "..." button of the comments, then create a new issue with these comments and continue on it.
It's not perfect but it could help moving the discussion elsewhere.
Related
On Github issues pages, how do you know which post contains the solution to the issue?
Take this page, for example.
The issue is closed, so we are to presume the problem is solved... yet this discussion thread (and many are much longer) seems to be mostly people talking back and forth in circles and it's very confusing to try to determine which post is intended or generally accepted to be the solution.
I was thinking it would be nice if the repo owner/representative could designate a post as what they determine to be the solution... with some kind of graphic... but I don't see that.
Ideally, if a pull request fixes an issue they would be linked by referencing the issue from the PR. For example, if a PR closes issue #123 the PR description would say closes #123 or fixes #123. You can also link them manually.
The PR would appear in the issue's "Linked Pull Requests" sidebar, and vice-versa.
For example, we can see that this PR is linked to this issue.
And from the issue we can see the linked PR.
In the issue, we can see activity on the linked PR as well as anything which mentioned it. A mention is a commit log or comment or issue or PR with something like #43878.
If the issue is closed for some other reason, ideally the person closing mentions why in a comment.
If people keep coming back to the issue and are confused, that may indicate the issue is not closed, or perhaps there is a related documentation issue.
In your example, we can see where the issue was mentioned in other issues.
And, sure enough, its referenced in issue #63056 and in PR #9 https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-flutter/pull/9#issuecomment-670038832. That information might help.
And we can see why the issue was closed, the change was intentional.
Unfortunately, the reason and resolution is buried in a comment. Improving the documentation may have been a better choice. That would have been done in a linked PR.
I was thinking it would be nice if the repo owner/representative could designate a post as what they determine to be the solution... with some kind of graphic... but I don't see that.
That would be nice. I don't believe Github has that feature. Posting it here is unlikely to reach Github. You could suggest it in Github Community or ask Support.
As a work around, one can make their final comment and then lock the issue so no further comments can be made. This would avoid burying the resolution. Then people would have to open a new issue if they really want to comment.
Or, one can edit the description of the issue to include a prominent reference to the resolution.
See also
Autolinked references and URLs
Linking a pull request to an issue
Apologies if this is not enough of a coding question - please refer me to the right Stack Exchange platform if there is one more relevant for this question.
I had a problem with yarn / webpack with a create-react-app and I was not the first one - the issue has been reproduced and discussed before on GitHub.
Is there a way for me to favorite this issue, or, in any other way follow progress on this issue, while not getting in the way of the discussion (since it seems they covered everything I was struggling with already)?
There's already a comment which suggests kind of the right solution.
But the feature actually has a different name on GitHub, and I think calling it "watch" is confusing for people who aren't that familiar with GitHub's UI.
(there's a big "Watch" button on the top of the issue, but it's on top of all pages of the repo, and it's for watching the whole repo, not this particular issue!)
It's actually called Notifications, and it's down on the issue's right sidebar:
After clicking it, it shows that you are now "following" this issue:
I'm in a PR and I want to create a follow up Issue from one of a review comment. Basically, I'm sort of looking for right click on the comment and getting a 'Create Issue' option.
Please help me if there's any way to achieve this on GitHub.
I want to create a follow up Issue from one of a review comment.
2 years later (Sept. 2018), that is possible.
See "Open a new issue from a comment":
Sometimes a conversation in an issue or a pull request can move off in a tangential direction.
Now you can click Open new issue within the comment’s options menu to open a new issue, which will include a reference to the original comment – helping you get the conversation back on track.
I think there's no such option right now, but you can ask GitHub support about it. Nevertheless, you can reference concrete PR in a new issue by typing #ID, where ID is ID of the PR. Then, an issue will be linked to PR. I think you can also mark a line in code on GitHub and link it in new issue as well.
My team and I use checklists in GitHub issue comments, especially in the first comment of an issue. The first comment becomes a summary that evolves over time, but it makes me uncomfortable that I don't know how to see the history of earlier versions of a changed comment.
It's not possible, according to a GitHub representative, on 2015-11-11.
Is it possible to completely remove an issue from the GitHub issue tracker?
No, the github API only allows you to open/close/reopen issues. Here's the Issues API docs.
You can edit an existing issue (let's say if it's a duplicate) and you can change the title, description and target milestone to be something completely different. That's as close as you can get to removing the ticket, AFIK.
Update Nov 2018: You now can delete issues if you are a owner of the repository!
See "Github - remove issues entered in error"
https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-your-work-on-github/deleting-an-issue mentions:
People with admin permissions in a repository can permanently delete an issue from a repository.
For other people (without permission), questionto42's comment shows that you can ask to GitHub support for the issue to be deleted, as illustrated here.
At May 2018, original answer:
Three 8 years later, and closing issues remains the answer (still no deletion possible).
See "The Ghost of Issues Past", where GitHub advise to check and close:
issues opened over a year ago state:open created:<2013-01-01
the ones I'm involved with involves:twp state:open created:<2013-01-01
and those not updated in the last year involves:twp state:open updated:<2013-01-01
For posterity: Deleting issues would be a bad thing, since in general they can be targets of associations on github.
But if you are willing to sacrifice the collaboration info, here is a "whack it with a sledgehammer" approach:
Clone your original repo.
Copy your issues via the Issues API.
Delete the original repo; alternatively, chose a new name for your new repo.
Re-create a new repo based on your clone.
Re-create the issues you want to keep via the Issues API.
I imagine this could potentially lose a lot of other linking information as well such as forks, pull requests, etc.
Public feature request
I wrote to GitHub in 2014-08 and https://github.com/jdennes replied by email:
Thanks for the suggestion. It's only possible to edit/clear the issue content currently. However I've added a +1 to this suggestion on our internal Feature Request List.
confirming it was not possible.
Best workaround so far
set the title to something that will never conflict with any search, e.g. a single dot ..
This may not hide the history of your blunder entirely because of the automatic undeletable "changed the title to" comments.
make the body empty
GitHub staff has the power
If something is a security issue, contact GitHub staff, they usually reply quickly, and are able to remove issues for good as can be seen at: http://archive.is/OfjVt which has issue 1 and 3 but no 2.
You can delete the entire repo if it's really important.
Possible workaround
As of 04/2019 not all issues can be deleted current work around is to edit the issue then delete the edit history, the only downside is that the issue still exist and the old title could be seen.
You could by just asking to github to ban the user that created the issue 😁
Source: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/253#issuecomment-290944938
Users are unable to do this, including repository owner.
But issues can be deleted by Github support. One may contact them and request deletion. It may be delayed or refused but it is an available option that can be used.
Still impossible. Another workaround to the ones suggested in the other answers is to label the issue as "deleted" (or any other label you might fancy better), to be able to filter them out if you use the github API to retrieve them. Obviously you should use that specific label only for this purpose, setting the label when you close the issue.
You can create a new repository.
Transfer (yeah it is possible) unwanted issues to the new repository.
Then delete the new repository.