How to Find Solution from Within a Github Issue?

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On Github issues pages, how do you know which post contains the solution to the issue?

Take this page, for example.

The issue is closed, so we are to presume the problem is solved... yet this discussion thread (and many are much longer) seems to be mostly people talking back and forth in circles and it's very confusing to try to determine which post is intended or generally accepted to be the solution.

I was thinking it would be nice if the repo owner/representative could designate a post as what they determine to be the solution... with some kind of graphic... but I don't see that.

1 Answers

Ideally, if a pull request fixes an issue they would be linked by referencing the issue from the PR. For example, if a PR closes issue #123 the PR description would say closes #123 or fixes #123. You can also link them manually.

The PR would appear in the issue's "Linked Pull Requests" sidebar, and vice-versa.

For example, we can see that this PR is linked to this issue.

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And from the issue we can see the linked PR.

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In the issue, we can see activity on the linked PR as well as anything which mentioned it. A mention is a commit log or comment or issue or PR with something like #43878.

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If the issue is closed for some other reason, ideally the person closing mentions why in a comment.

If people keep coming back to the issue and are confused, that may indicate the issue is not closed, or perhaps there is a related documentation issue.


In your example, we can see where the issue was mentioned in other issues.

enter image description here

And, sure enough, its referenced in issue #63056 and in PR #9 https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-flutter/pull/9#issuecomment-670038832. That information might help.

And we can see why the issue was closed, the change was intentional.

enter image description here

Unfortunately, the reason and resolution is buried in a comment. Improving the documentation may have been a better choice. That would have been done in a linked PR.


I was thinking it would be nice if the repo owner/representative could designate a post as what they determine to be the solution... with some kind of graphic... but I don't see that.

That would be nice. I don't believe Github has that feature. Posting it here is unlikely to reach Github. You could suggest it in Github Community or ask Support.

As a work around, one can make their final comment and then lock the issue so no further comments can be made. This would avoid burying the resolution. Then people would have to open a new issue if they really want to comment.

Or, one can edit the description of the issue to include a prominent reference to the resolution.


See also

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