Introducing GitHub Issues to Discourse

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:warning: This tool is no longer maintained. Check out Discourse Code Review instead.

The Discourse Team and I are pleased to announce our Import GitHub Issues into Discourse tool. The idea behind it is fairly simple, authenticate with GitHub, select the issues you wish to import, and then provide your Discourse credentials and let it do the rest (as shown in the screenshots below)!

Authenticate with GitHub

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Select a Repository

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Select the Issues you want to Import

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Enter your Discourse Details and start the Import Process

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Success!

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If you have repositories that have open issues and you have a Discourse instance where you would like these issues to reside, please give it a go!

We would love to hear any feedback to your experience with the tool, any improvements that may be useful, and more importantly if you encounter any issues or errors in this topic.

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While the idea seems simple, I don’t understand why you would want to do this. :slight_smile: The GitHub issue tracker is … an issue tracker, with

  • issue numbers
  • milestones
  • open/closed states (that don’t block discussion)
  • issues that can be referred to and marked as closed from commits
  • automatic links to and from pull requests
  • etc

Discourse is a forum. Why would you want to import issues into it?

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The most common use case is when an issue tracker gets overburdened with “Discussion” and “Enhancement” issues. Atom.io provides a very relevant case study:

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Seems like a shared dropbox account and a notepad file would be more appropriate.

Then you don’t even have to login continually. Just open a file, make an edit and save.

Then it’s integrated into your OS of choice, naturally. And it doesn’t become a barrier to your workflow or communication.

It’s obvious that a website designed for bugtracking is inferior in every way.

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But if pagination is a barrier to communication,

Wouldn’t taking all discussion offsite become a barrier to resolving the bug?

Oh, idea… lightbulb.

If you can get GitHub to onebox the whole Discourse discussion thread (on a separate tab or something)… I think that would be the best of both worlds.

You could isolate the discussion, but then people wouldn’t get shuffled off to another site.

love the new vertical scrollbar btw <3 <3 <3

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No, the whole idea is to take discussion off site, so there are less bike shed discussions. Decisions can be carried forward without distractions.

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Ok, so you have a few options.

  1. Lock the GitHub ticket. Lose the ability to ask for pertinent additional information unless you unlock the thread.
  2. Do the OP suggestion. Leave the GitHub open. The conversation splits and bike-shedding happens on the ticket anyway.
  3. Do the OP suggestion. Lock the GitHub thread. Sort through all the bikeshedding on here for pertinent information, pushing the problem back 1 step to obscurity.
  4. OR the MOST LIKELY THING. Do the OP suggestion. Lock the GitHub thread. Ignore any further pertinent information on Discourse because you put a barrier up to it.

Either way you’ll have to moderate. So, why not keep the conversation on GitHub and moderate it there. If you have to lock the thread, someone can PM you here and you can post it on that thread.

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Because the github conversations are awful, you can’t even quote properly for a start. It is simply not discussion software.

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???

Even if, if you reference another ticket, or anything on GitHub, you’ll be crossing domains constantly.

Sure, you’ll be able to “quote properly”, but you’re splitting usage here.

I doubt this is going to go over well.

But, it’s obvious that you made up your mind already. I’ll try not to be a further distraction.

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You can see how we do it right here with Discourse. All our discussion is here, yet the code is on github. It isn’t some kind of magical impossibility to achieve.

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But, what if someone were “uncooperative”?

Wouldn’t it be easy to justify moderating them away?

Also, why not just start pushing a subculture on GitHub and convince them all that this is the right way to do it?

If it is superior, then you should be able to gain traction?

Ah… I’m doing it again.

Ok, agree to disagree.

You’ve definitely made Discourse better over time, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.