Remove Issue / PR templates?

[kescobo]

In discussions at JuliaCon (separately with both @emiller88 and @rasmushenningsson), the extensive issue and PR templates that we use came up as possible barriers to entry for new users / contributors. I feel like these templates can be super important for extremely active repos to keep things manageable, but I don't know if any BioJulia repos are really at that place.

Of course, even if we adopt this proposal, individual package authors should feel free to retain them / modify them for their own purposes, but as a default matter, I vote that we remove them.

Thoughts?

[jakobnissen]

Yes, I agree. They currently do more harm than good, by making issues and PRs harder than they need to be. Also, I often see new users submitting issues that are strictly adhering to the template, which doesn't always make the issue more understandable, but surely is annoying for the user.
Although I favor no templates over the current templates, I think succint and friendly templates would be even better. Something like this

Issue template.

Thank you for making an issue. If you are submitting a bug report, it will help us if you include the following information:

• Your version of Julia and BioSequences.jl
• A small example that demonstrates the bug. If possible, please make the code copy-pastable into a fresh REPL.

For PRs:

Thank you for your contribution! If you have any questions about your PR, or need help completing it, you can ping the maintainers of this repository who will be happy to help if they can find time.
You can optionally use the following check list when you work on your PR:

• I have updated any relevant documentation and docstrings
• I have added unit tests, and the CodeCov bot shows my new code is covered by tests
• I have mentioned my changes in the CHANGELOG.md file

[CiaranOMara]

I agree; the current templates are obstructive. I think there should be minimal guidance to assist less experienced people to be more effective. I like the style of Jokob's suggested templates.

On a side note, I could do without the changelog; I find them messy and difficult to get correct, it's much easier to use GitHub's release notes after the fact.

[edmundmiller]

I think the template changes are good. We can circle back around if there's a huge adoption in the future and too many issues to manage 😉

On a side note, I could do without the changelog; I find them messy and difficult to get correct, it's much easier to use GitHub's release notes after the fact.

Could they both not hold the same information? Whatever you put in the release notes can just go in the changelog. Because otherwise it's tied into GitHub and I don't think there's a way to export that information.

[kescobo]

I think having the discipline to keep a changelog is valuable, but I rarely manage this. The auto-generated release notes are good, but as @emiller88 says, they're tied to github.

But as with most things, I think that we're setting defaults that individual package maintainers are welcome to override where they see fit. I don't think there's anything (other than adhering to Julia Community CoC or something more stringent) that I consider mandatory.

[jakobnissen]

Historically we've been terrible at updating the changelog. There is some benefit to having it (autogenerated changelogs tend to conflate trivial fixed and tweaks with big sweeping changes) but I can see the argument that they are a little annoying to maintain. I'm ambivalent

[edmundmiller]

I wonder how they do that under the hood... I can't tell if this is the official one or not https://github.com/github-changelog-generator/github-changelog-generator

[kescobo]

Alright, I've made the suggested changes here: BioJulia/Contributing#10

Next steps:

• Should we also simplify the CONTRIBUTING.md template? That feels less of a barrier, and it has some good info (I made some minor updates, fixed dead links etc)
• Roll out changes to existing REPOs. Anyone have experience with using the github API to do this in a systematic way?

[jakobnissen]

I think it's a good idea to rephrase the CONTRIBUTING.md template. It's clearly outdated, and I also think it's too verbose. More specifically, it mixes a lot of not-really-important stuff in with the important stuff. There is a lot of stuff that is nice to know, but most of it is not important if you just want to make a PR.

I can try to make a PR to update the file, then we can discuss specifics in that PR.

Edit: BioJulia/Contributing#11

[kescobo]

Anyone want to volunteer for

Roll out changes to existing REPOs. Anyone have experience with using the github API to do this in a systematic way?

[TransGirlCodes]

Heya, I'm cool with discontinuing the changelogs and replacing the issue / PR templates with something similar.
When I initially added those I did follow a guide on how to do to the "community engagement" stuff on these projects in the "best way", but I suppose all of these practices have tradeoffs and you don't always know until you try.