x/website: add bug filing wizard

[bradfitz]

@adg and I were discussing putting a little web app up in front of Github's actual issue tracker, to get better bug reports from users.

The old code.google.com bug tracker let us present different types of users (project owners/developers vs. users) different types of templates. Github has nothing. As a result, we get some pretty incomplete bug reports.

Proposal:

• https://golang.org/issue/new and various other things would link or redirect to a new web app, e.g. https://bug.golang.org/
• https://bug.golang.org/ would take the user through an auth flow to get their Github auth token with permission to file a bug.
• https://bug.golang.org/ would then have users fill out a template form, asking the Go questions (version, OS/ARCH, go env, etc) which would help us debug.
• upon submit, we post a bug to Github as the original Github user. (Bugs aren't posted as a robot account)
• a bot would find bugs filed directly to Github without using the template and amend them with a hint to use the bug instead. Perhaps we even link to https://bug.golang.org/amend/NNNN where NNN is the incomplete bug report. We could then append to the bug with the details. The bot would not trigger for bugs filed by members of the project.

@adg also proposed baking some bug-filing capabilities into the go command, but the details of that are fuzzy and would be the subject of a separate bug. Let's not discuss that part here.

/cc @robpike @rsc

[adg]

The front end could also use some kind of matching algorithm to find
potential pre-existing bugs.

On 13 July 2015 at 11:23, Brad Fitzpatrick notifications@github.com wrote:

@adg https://github.com/adg and I were discussing putting a little web
app up in front of Github's actual issue tracker, to get better bug reports
from users.

The old code.google.com bug tracker let us present different types of
users (project owners/developers vs. users) different types of templates.
Github has nothing. As a result, we get some pretty incomplete bug reports.

Proposal:

• https://golang.org/issue/new and various other things would link or
  redirect to a new web app, e.g. https://bug.golang.org/
• https://bug.golang.org/ would take the user through an auth flow to
  get their Github auth token with permission to file a bug.
• https://bug.golang.org/ would then have users fill out a template
  form, asking the Go questions (version, OS/ARCH, go env, etc) which would
  help us debug.
• upon submit, we post a bug to Github as the original Github user.
  (Bugs aren't posted as a robot account)
• a bot would find bugs filed directly to Github without using the
  template and amend them with a hint to use the bug instead. Perhaps we even
  link to https://bug.golang.org/amend/NNNN where NNN is the incomplete
  bug report. We could then append to the bug with the details. The bot would
  not trigger for bugs filed by members of the project.

@adg https://github.com/adg also proposed baking some bug-filing
capabilities into the go command, but the details of that are fuzzy and
would be the subject of a separate bug. Let's not discuss that part here.

/cc @robpike https://github.com/robpike @rsc https://github.com/rsc

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[josharian]

This sounds great. The front end could also guide users to ask questions on golang-nuts instead of filing issues. (The bot that finds bugs filed directly to GitHub should probably also provide that hint.)

[rsc]

This seems like an obviously good idea. Go for it. (Make sure the app only asks for public_repo.)

[broady]

Is this something we still want? Since October, we got GitHub issue templates.

[bradfitz]

I think it could still be helpful.

[adg]

I think it would still be a nice thing to have.

On 28 June 2016 at 08:36, Chris Broadfoot notifications@github.com wrote:

Is this something we still want? Since October, we got GitHub issue
templates.

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[adg]

If someone wants to tackle this, go ahead.

[SCKelemen]

@adg Is this issue, and #16635 something we still want to pursue? I could work on this in October?

[rsc]

@andybons would be the person to talk to at this point.

It seems to me that the combination of github issue templates and go bug (new since the Jul 19, 2016 "go ahead" comment) greatly reduces the benefit of a whole separate web page. At this point the incremental benefit seems not clearly greater than the cost of implementation and ongoing maintenance. I'd even be OK with closing this issue at this point. Effort on tools might be better spent on others, like the PR gateway.

Leaving for @andybons