
GitHub: Reorder issues in a milestone - Oompa
https://github.com/blog/2206-reorder-issues-within-a-milestone
======
dlandis
Sorry, but it almost seems like some weird variation of Stockholm Syndrome
that people get excited about this. It is a trivial feature that should have
already been there, and was actually there over 5 years ago before they
removed it. If you want to feature compare, Issues is still way behind what
various other issue trackers had many years ago.

~~~
ngrilly
What kind of features are missing, compared to other issue trackers you like?

~~~
impetiredome
Although I'm not OP, I use Phabricator
([https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/](https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/))
at work and I absolutely love it. It's much better than Github for our use
case, as it has subtasks, task merging, priorities, Kanban workboards etc.
Tasks can block another task (for instance, the "Implement OAuth2" task can
block the "Build a private API" task). You can flag objects for later and set
specific privacy rules for every task (for instance, you can hide a security
bug from the public until it's fixed). It's all tightly integrated with other
Phabricator apps, which is a plus. Also, it's open source.

~~~
faitswulff
GitHub _does_ sort of have subtasks. If you use checkboxes like so:

\- [x] The root url displays a page

\- [ ] Users can sign up, sign in, register

GitHub will display the progress on the issue (when you're looking at the list
of issues) as 1 of 2.

~~~
Bromskloss
Can you have several levels?

------
simonw
Unrelated feature request (because I bet people from GitHub are reading this
thread): I'd love to be able to create gists under an organization account
rather than attached to my personal profile (and hence only visible to members
of that organization).

~~~
andreynering
You may consider to create an issue in one of these repos (or both):

\- [https://github.com/dear-github/dear-
github/issues](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues)

\-
[https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues)

------
evv
I'm amazed that a trivial feature addition like this can make the front page
of HN.

GitHub may not be perfect, but they are clearly doing something right to win
(or re-win?) the affection of the community.

~~~
viraptor
I'm not sure if this is really a good thing. Possibly people are happy that
some really annoying problem finally got fixed, rather than celebrate the
feature itself. "GitHub stopped killing puppies" would also likely make a
front page.

------
NicoJuicy
Some people can't make the front with a webapp that takes 3 months to create.

Github gets on the front with re-ordering issues ;)

------
farresito
The letter that the group of developers wrote a few months ago must have
scared them, because they have been adding quite a few features compared to
what they did the previous couple of years.

~~~
jessaustin
It inspires one to wonder... what were they doing before that? Alternatively,
perhaps they just hired a bunch of new people right then?

~~~
joshmn
Just writing checks for friends and family.

------
state
This is great. I thought this would be a useful feature at one point, and then
just figured it would probably never happen.

Funny how any stream of notifications just turns into a todo list though. I
wish I could just pipe them all to one place and have the changes actually
committed back to the source. It'd be great to collaborate where some people
use Asana, some people use Trello, and some people just use textfiles but
they're all in sync and it doesn't matter where or how you make edits.

~~~
technomancy
> I thought this would be a useful feature at one point

You used to be able to do this ages ago. Reordering was one of the features
that "no one used" and didn't make the cut when they rewrote "Issues 2.0" five
years ago:

[https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-
generation](https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-generation)

------
diziet
I love a lot of the changes github has been making. One sorely needed thing
they've recently added is ability to assign issues to more than one person.

The one thing I am dying for is the ability to mark notifications unread.
Notifications are a wonderful interface to catch up on things where you're
mentioned or needed, but there is no way to mark them as unread, so you have
to deal with them right that second.

~~~
sytse
I agree on having a need for that feature myself too. In GitLab we solved it
by not marking TODO's when you read them but only when you take action. The
problem has been when you don't want to do anything (reply, comment, vote,
etc.). That is why we just added the ability to mark TODO's as read in GitLab
in 8.9
[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/06/22/gitlab-8-9-released/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/06/22/gitlab-8-9-released/)
section "Manually add Todos" (you can mark them done in the same spot.

BTW We're working on ordering issues as part of an issue board
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/17907](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/17907)

------
ngrilly
I'm happy they added back this feature.

Can someone from GitHub explain why they removed it a few years ago [1], and
why they changed their mind and added it back today?

[1] [https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-
generation](https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-generation)

~~~
technomancy
The rationale I heard back then was "no one used it". My guess is that these
days, even if "no one" means "less than 1% of users" it still amounts to
hundreds of thousands of people.

------
guessmyname
Can some of the people who upvoted this explain why is this relevant?

~~~
joshmanders
Because a lot of people use github issues and milestones as a way to gauge
what is needed to be done for what release, and the ability to order by
priority is a great option.

You may think it's trivial and doesn't deserve the front page, but many people
do. Clearly.

------
kingosticks
The main issue I had with milestones is that you could not rename them. Have
they fixed that one too?

~~~
joshmanders
Yes you can rename milestones.

~~~
kingosticks
Cheers. Unfortunately it seems that the milestone name and link where they are
assigned in the issue still doesn't. So you get "[user] added this to the
[old_milestone_name] milestone on [date]" and then clicking it returns no
issues.

------
qznc
Why not a general priority system? Why only for a milestone?

