Contents
Introduction
Hey there! I'm Francesco known as Airscript on the web.
Today we're gonna continue our focus on GitHub Repositories taking a look to Issues tab.
Without any further ado, I think we can start.
Requirements
You don't need any particular requirement to consult issues section on GitHub.
If you need a place to follow along this post, my chosen repository for today's blog post is Awesome.
Overview
Let's say you have encountered problems with a particular software that you're using and that software is also available on GitHub. How do you check an open issue or report one?
That's what we'll be learning today!
It can be daunting at first, looking at this image, to know what's going on. Fear not, there are three main things to learn here: issues, labels and milestones.
Issues
Starting from the roots, an issue as the name implies, is a problem.
During the years this term just evolved in something more, even though not matching its meaning.
Today's issues are simply activities. Activities that can span from features, discussions, ideas, bugs and so on.
One important thing to keep in mind for issues is that they can have, talking simply, two states: open and close state.
Inside of GitHub you can create, search or simply interact with issues.
Creating An Issue
So starting from here, what do I have to do to start creating a new issue?
It's simple. Just use the green button on the right and fill the information needed in the opening page:
Remember that this is not an in-depth article on issues lifecycle , but an overview on issues tab in GitHub.
Searching An Issue
In order to fulfill the search of an issue, we have a pretty long search bar in this section.
And, the cool thing about this bar, is that it just responds to its search language.
In this image, we are filtering for opened issues.
Interacting With An Issue
The last thing that we can do, regarding issues in this section, it to click on them and actually interacting with them.
As you see, there is a list in the first image representing, of course, the listed issues for the repository.
When clicking on one of them, you are entering the deep context of it, looking at title, descriptions, comments and so on.
You can also leave a comment of yours if you want to!
Labels
Now that we have seen what issues are and what we can do with them, specifically to this section, let's talk about labels.
Labels serve different purposes but the main one is to categorize issues.
GitHub on every new repository just creates some default ones such as: enhancement, documentation, bug and so on.
Don't forget to put a label on your issue if you want to get recognized for what it really is!
Milestones
At last only milestones remain.
Milestones are something that you don't want to sleep on.
They can be a container for issues, regarding a specific goal.
Let's do an example on this. Let's say that you file an issue for a project that you use and want to know when that issue will be solved.
Milestones tell you exactly that, even though not everyone uses them in the right way.
If your issue is listed inside a milestone that will be marked as the next version of the software, then you're good to go!
Here, following, an image representing a list of milestones.
Had to take this one onto another repository since Awesome is not using milestones currently.
Conclusion
In today's post we have seen Issues section inside a GitHub Repository.
We have talked about how to create, search and interact with issues as well as the meaning behind labels and milestones.
As you can see, things are starting to get a little bit complicated but don't worry: we still have time to talk in depth about issues, labeling, milestones and so on in later specific posts.
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If you have liked this post, just leave a reaction and a comment in the section below.
To not lose any new post, just remember that you can follow me here on dev.to and also other platforms that you can find on airscript.it.
Thank you kindly!
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