[Python-checkins] devguide: Fill in details on how to handle languishing issues.

[brett.cannon]

brett.cannon pushed 5b093d79a8f4 to devguide:

http://hg.python.org/devguide/rev/5b093d79a8f4
changeset:   72:5b093d79a8f4
tag:         tip
user:        Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>
date:        Sun Jan 09 18:14:05 2011 -0800
summary:
  Fill in details on how to handle languishing issues.

files:
  languishing.rst

diff --git a/languishing.rst b/languishing.rst
--- a/languishing.rst
+++ b/languishing.rst
@@ -2,3 +2,25 @@
 
 Marking Issues as "Languishing"
 ===============================
+
+Sometimes an issue has no clear answer. It can be because core developers
+cannot agree on the proper solution (or if a problem even exists). Other
+times a solution is agreed upon but writing the code for the solution would
+take too much effort for little gain, and so no one wants to do the work (or
+would simply break too much pre-existing code without a different solution.
+
+In these cases an issue will languish_ in the `issue tracker`_. In the case of
+an issue that is languishing, it should have its status set as such. This
+serves the purpose of preventing people who are trying to :ref:`fix issues
+<fixingissues>` from wasting time on issues that even core developers cannot
+come up with an agreed-upon solution for.
+
+A good way to tell if an issue is languishing is based on whether an issue had
+an in-depth discussion that stalled several months ago. In that instance it is
+typically safe to set the status of the issue to "languishing". If you are
+unsure you can always leave a comment on the issue asking if others agree that
+it is languishing.
+
+
+.. _issue tracker: http://bugs.python.org
+.. _languish: http://bugs.python.org/issue?@columns=title,id,activity,status&@sort=activity&@group=priority&@filter=status&@pagesize=50&@startwith=0&status=4&@dispname=Languishing

--
Repository URL: http://hg.python.org/devguide