[sr-dev] Info: Issue and PR automatic management

Hello, during the Kamailio Development Meeting that took place in Dusseldorf earlier this month, one topic was related to administrative tasks related to project development and management, how to simplify/automatize such tasks. To reduce the work load on volunteering contributors, GitHub Actions were already used for various tasks related to project development and management (e.g., automatic builds on commits and pull requests to detect compile errors or code formatting mistakes). In Dusseldorf another task was configured to be managed with GitHub Actions, respectively the check of open issues and pull requests to evaluate the interest of submitters, developers and community users to pursue them. If there is no activity on an issue (potential bug or feature request) or a pull request, after 6 weeks it is marked with the label `stale`. After two more weeks of no activity, the issue or the pull request is marked with the label `expired` and closed. Note that any comment postpones the expire timeline, being considered that there is interest in pursuing the issue or the pull request. Requests for features were already treated in this way: if nobody commits to implement it, it can be closed after one month, but it needed manual work and many were still kept open. Potential bug reports that become very old are hard to tackle if the source code changes or new major releases are out, they might even not be valid anymore. Anyhow, this automatic operations can be reverted if there is still interest in pursuing the specific issues or pull requests. A registered developer can remove labels and reopen a closed issue or pull request. The non-registered-developer contributors have to make a comment that includes the token `/notstale` to remove the label `stale` or includes the token `/notexpired` to reopen a closed item. This new kind of automatic task management might add a little inconvenience because one has to restate the interest from time to time for those items that could not be addressed. However, considering that Kamailio is an open source collaborative project, in order to be fair for those that volunteer to spend time and resources for development of Kamailio, also the users/submitters have to stay engaged, not just report and forget about. The process to automatize tasks related to Kamailio development and administration is work in progress. Everything can be adjusted based on feedback (e.g., time lines), feel free to suggest improvements or new solutions to make things easier for everyone within the project ecosystem. Cheers, Daniel -- Daniel-Constantin Mierla (@ asipto.com) twitter.com/miconda -- linkedin.com/in/miconda Kamailio Consultancy and Development Services Kamailio Advanced Training -- asipto.com