Triage Guidelines

General guidelines

• All work has an issue. Even if it's a small pull request, link it to an issue.
• If you'd like to have an issue schedule to a particular release, use Asana.
• If you'd like to set priority on an issue, use a priority label described below.

Milestones

Milestones and releases

• Every time a release happens for something on the Release channel, there is a sign-off on Slack by QA in the #release channel.
• There is 1 milestone per release, but as noted below, a milestone is often based on another milestone in a chain like fashion.

The QA process around milestones

• There is no difference between an Android milestone and a Desktop milestone. There should just be for example a 1.13.x milestone.
• If there is a second release within a particular branch (e.g. the 1.13.x branch), then we number it 1.13.x Release #2. If there's a third, 1.13.x Release #3.
• Each milestone within a particular branch, is based on the one before it. The description of the milestone should link to the milestone before it.
• The description of these milestones will be updated as things are released for them. QA will make sure that the whole chain of milestones -are tested for the release on the platform that's happening.
• As an example, we can have a 1.13.x Release #2 as the title. And the description could even be:

  Based on 1.13.x Release <link>
  Desktop Hotfix 2
  Android Release 1 
  

Milestones and pull requests

• Pull requests should go into milestones matching the branch name for where they are landing. For master see src/brave/package.json for the milestone version.

Milestones and issues

• Issues only get assigned to a milestone once they are completed and merged into that milestone.
• Milestones generally do not track open issues.
  • If an issue should be locked into a particular milestone, and it is not implemented yet, then put a release/blocking label on it. This should be rare though. E.g. a security critical bug, a big regression, or a Chromium upgrade.
  • Please do not change milestones / priority / boards on issues labeled security without consulting the security team in Slack (#security or #security-discussion).

Projects

• Project boards track areas of work, they should be 1:1 with Pods.
• A list of all project boards can be found here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects
• Project boards are a great way to organize priorities (via labels) for a given functional area of work.

Triaging project boards

• We have weekly triage meetings which includes the following schedule:
  • Go through the projects listed here https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects
    • Get a status on each issue
    • Move issues along the process from the left most column to the right most depending on status.
    • Make sure the Untriaged Backlog column is empty and we add appropriate priority/p1 - priority/p5 labels
  • Some Projects may have a special triage meeting only for that project.
  • Projects will be added and removed over time.

Uplifting

• By default everything is PR'ed against master and only lands in master.
• If something is wanted in Dev, Beta, or Release channel, then a PR must be made to the current version branch and it must get an approval from someone on the uplift approvers list below. That PR must contain the issue link, one PR per channel.
• Milestone on the issue should match only the smallest version where it is landed currently and NOT where you want it ideally.
• Milestones on the PRs should match only the version branch that the PR is being merged to.
• There is a handy script you can use for uplifting! Check out the docs here
• The person doing the original request must see that the PR actually gets merged.
• This person must only merge, after they see their change in Nightly and test that it works.

Uplift approvers

• Current approvers are @rebron @kjozwiak @Sri @clifton (Slack usernames).
• There is a formal GitHub team for the approvers
• If you are not an approver, do NOT approve any requests made to a Beta or Release branch
• Approvers should be working to keep PRs to version branches at 0 issues.

Labels

Priority labels

We use priority labels from 1-5 as a way to describe which issues should be worked on next. The general principle is:

• if there's a P1 issue you could work on, you should do that at your earliest possible convenience
• don't start work on a P(n+1) issue if there's a P(n) issue you could start working on instead

The rest of this is a rough rubric about how to prioritize issues.

• priority/P1: A very extremely bad problem. We might push a hotfix for it. [This should only be for a very few rare issues.]
• priority/P2: A bad problem. We might uplift this to the next planned release. [We don't expect to see many of these.]
• priority/P3: The next thing for us to work on. It'll ride the trains. [Our bread and butter work.]
• priority/P4: Planned work. We expect to get to it "soon". [A larger backlog of things we're getting to.]
• priority/P5: Not scheduled. Don't anticipate work on this any time soon. [Not necessarily closed/wontfix, but not in the work queue at all.]

Ultimately, go by the expectation that folks will pick up issues in priority order. If you're noting a task to add to your team's backlog: probably P4. If you're noting a new important task, probably P3 unless unusually severe. If you're triaging a suggestion which shouldn't edge out anything we've already planned: P5.

QA triage

• Never remove QA/Yes and QA/No labels
• Things that should get a QA/No label: Things that are internal or tooling related only, things that are impossible for QA to test, meta issues, things that are covered by something else fully with a test plan in the same milestone.
• These labels are expected to be added when a PR is submitted, but it gets missed sometimes.
• QA should block a release if there are any issues with neither of those tags using a search query similar to this one but with an appropriate milestone defined: is:issue is:closed milestone:"Releasable builds 0.55.x" -label:"QA/No" -label:"QA/Yes".
• QA should ping people as needed to make sure things have one of those labels.
• Add labels for checked once an issue is checked on an OS. If a certain OS is not needed then indicate it in a comment and mark it as checked too.
• QA should use a search like this to find things that are not yet checked:
  • Linux: is:issue is:closed milestone:"Releasable builds 0.55.x" -label:"QA/QA Pass-Linux" -label:"QA/No"
  • macOS: is:issue is:closed milestone:"Releasable builds 0.55.x" -label:"QA/QA Pass-macOS" -label:"QA/No"
  • Windows: is:issue is:closed milestone:"Releasable builds 0.55.x" -label:"QA/QA Pass-Win64" -label:"QA/No"

Release notes

• Every issue should be tagged with either release-notes/include or release-notes/exclude.
• You can use a search term like this to see all unlabeled issues: is:issue milestone:"0.56.x - Beta" -label:"release-notes/include" -label:"release-notes/exclude"
• Releases shouldn't go out without release notes.
• Ask QA to generate output when ready.
• PR team should get a rough draft at the start of the Beta period of what will be included in the Beta release.
• Release notes should be included in a file on the root of brave-browser named CHANGELOG.md.
• On each release, release notes (or a link to release notes) should also be included in the published release.