Bug triage guidelines

This page describes the typical workflow of the bug triage team aka bugsquad when handling issues and pull requests on Godot’s GitHub repository. It is bound to evolve together with the bugsquad, so do not hesitate to propose modifications to the following guidelines.

Issues management

GitHub proposes various features to manage issues:

  • Set one or several labels from a predefined list

  • Set one milestone from a predefined list

  • Keep track of the issue in the project dashboard

  • Define one contributor as “assignee” among the Godot engine organization members

As the Godot engine organization on GitHub currently has a restricted number of contributors, we do not use assignees extensively for now. All contributors are welcome to take on any issue, if relevant after mentioning it on the issue ticket and/or discussing the best way to resolve it with other developers.

For the time being, we do not use the project dashboard feature either.

As far as possible, we try to assign labels (and milestones, when relevant) to both issues and pull requests.

Labels

The following labels are currently defined in the Godot repository:

Categories:

  • Archived: either a duplicate of another issue, or invalid. Such an issue would also be closed.

  • Breaks compat: describes something that can only be fixed by breaking compatibility with existing projects.

  • Bug: describes something that is not working properly.

  • Cherrypick: describes something that can be backported to a stable branch after being merged in the master branch.

  • Crash: describes a bug that causes the engine to crash. This label is only used for “hard” crashes, not freezes.

  • Confirmed: has been confirmed by at least one other contributor than the bug reporter (typically for Bug reports). The purpose of this label is to let developers know which issues are still reproducible when they want to select what to work on. It is therefore a good practice to add in a comment on what platform and what version or commit of Godot the issue could be reproduced; if a developer looks at the issue one year later, the Confirmed label may not be relevant anymore.

  • Discussion: the issue is not consensual and needs further discussion to define what exactly should be done to address the topic.

  • Documentation: issue related to the documentation. Mainly to request enhancements in the API documentation. Issues related to the ReadTheDocs documentation should be filed on the godot-docs repository.

  • Enhancement: describes a proposed enhancement to an existing functionality.

  • Feature proposal: describes a wish for a new feature to be implemented. Note that the main Godot repository no longer accepts feature requests. Please use godot-proposals instead.

  • For PR meeting: the issue needs to be discussed in a pull request meeting. These meetings are public and are held on the Godot Contributors Chat.

  • Good first issue: the issue is assumed to be an easy one to fix, which makes it a great fit for new contributors who need to become familiar with the code base.

  • High priority: the issue is particularly important as it can prevent people from releasing their projects or cause data loss.

  • Needs work: the pull request needs additional work before it can be merged.

  • Needs testing: the issue/pull request could not be completely tested and thus need further testing. This can mean that it needs to be tested on different hardware/software configurations or even that the steps to reproduce are not certain.

  • Performance: issues that directly impact engine or editor performance. Can also be used for pull requests that improve performance or add low-end-friendly options. Should not be coupled with Usability.

  • PR welcome / Hero wanted!: Contributions for issues with these labels are especially welcome. Note that this doesn’t mean you can’t work on issues without these labels.

  • Regression: the bug appeared after a stable release not exhibiting the bug was released.

  • Salvageable: the pull request can’t be merged due to design issues or merge conflicts and its author is not active anymore. However, it can still be picked up by an external contributor to bring it to a mergeable state. To do so, you need to open a new pull request based on the original pull request.

  • Tracker: issue used to track other issues (like all issues related to the plugin system).

  • Usability: issues that directly impact user usability. Should not be coupled with Performance.

The categories are used for general triage of the issues. They can be combined in some way when relevant, e.g. an issue can be labelled Enhancement and Usability at the same time if it’s an issue to improve usability. Or Feature proposal and Discussion if it’s a non-consensual feature request, or one that is not precise enough to be worked on.

Topics:

  • 2D: relates to 2D-specific issues. Should be coupled with one of the labels below, and should not be coupled with 3D.

  • 3D: relates to 3D-specific issues. Should be coupled with one of the labels below, and should not be coupled with 2D.

  • Assetlib: relates to issues with the asset library.

  • Audio: relates to the audio features (low and high level).

  • Buildsystem: relates to building issues, either linked to the SCons buildsystem or to compiler peculiarities.

  • Codestyle: relates to the programming style used within the codebase.

  • Core: anything related to the core engine. It might be further split later on as it’s a pretty big topic.

  • Editor: relates to issues in the editor (mainly UI).

  • GDNative: relates to the GDNative module.

  • GDScript: relates to GDScript.

  • GUI: relates to GUI (Control) nodes.

  • Import: relates to the resource import system.

  • Input: relates to input system.

  • Mono: relates to the C# / Mono bindings.

  • Navigation: relates to the navigation system (including A* and navmeshes).

  • Network: relates to networking.

  • Physics: relates to the physics engine (2D/3D).

  • Plugin: relates to problems encountered while writing plugins.

  • Porting: relates to some specific platforms or exporting projects.

  • Rendering: relates to the 2D and 3D rendering engines.

  • Shaders: relates to the Godot shader language or visual shaders.

  • Tests: relates to unit tests.

  • Thirdparty: relates to third-party libraries used in Godot.

  • VisualScript: relates to issues with the visual scripting language (not visual shaders).

  • XR: relates to Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality.

Issues would typically correspond to only one topic, though it’s not unthinkable to see issues that fit two bills. The general idea is that there will be specialized contributors teams behind all topics, so they can focus on the issues labelled with their team’s topic.

Platforms:

Android, HTML5, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, UWP

By default, it is assumed that a given issue applies to all platforms. If one of the platform labels is used, it is then exclusive and the previous assumption doesn’t stand anymore (so if it’s a bug on e.g. Android and Linux exclusively, select those two platforms).

Documentation labels

In the documentation repository, we use the following labels:

  • Bug: Incorrect information in an existing page. Not to be used for missing information.

  • Class reference: the issue is about the class reference, not a documentation page.

  • Discussion: the issue is not consensual and needs further discussion to define what exactly should be done to address the topic.

  • Enhancememnt: new information to be added in an existing page.

  • New page: a new page to be created.

  • Hero wanted!: contributions for issues with these labels are especially welcome. Note that this doesn’t mean you can’t work on issues without these labels.

  • Organization: The issue involves moving pages around or reorganizing content.

  • Redirect: a redirection needs to be created in the Read the Docs backend. Only administrators can do this.

  • Salvageable: the pull request can’t be merged due to design issues or merge conflicts and its author is not active anymore. However, it can still be picked up by an external contributor to bring it to a mergeable state. To do so, you need to open a new pull request based on the original pull request.

  • Topic:Mono: the issue is about C# support in Godot.

  • Topic:Website: the issue relates to the Sphinx/Read the Docs frontend or backend, not the documentation contents.

Milestones

Milestones correspond to planned future versions of Godot for which there is an existing roadmap. Issues that fit in the said roadmap should be filed under the corresponding milestone; if they don’t correspond to any current roadmap, they should be left without milestone. As a rule of thumb, an issue corresponds to a given milestone if it concerns a feature that is new in the milestone, or a critical bug that can’t be accepted in any future stable release, or anything that Juan wants to work on right now. :)

Contributors are free to pick issues regardless of their assigned milestone; if a fix is proposed for a bug that was not deemed urgent and thus without milestone, it would likely still be very welcome.