Community Issue Bash

Every quarter, from 2016 through 2019 we held a community event called an Issue bash. These events aimed to promote collaboration within our community and introduce new contributors to GitLab.

Since 2018 we are holding our online quarterly Hackathon events . Join the upcoming Hackathon event if you want to contribute to GitLab in the future.

We try to make the event accessible to contributors of all levels by collaborating on a range of tasks:

Finding issues in the tracker that can be easily closed
Categorizing existing issues that are lacking labels
Fixing known bugs and pain points
Shipping of existing feature proposals

There is no shortage of tasks that contributors can try their hand at. Whether this is writing their first merge request to contribute a bug fix or a feature proposal or collaborating with the core team to track down and close some duplicate issues and streamline the issue tracker.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I find out about upcoming issue bashes?

Issue bashes are announced on the blog and on Twitter. You can find a list of the bashes that we have planned and the dates in the section below
Where can I ask questions and look for Issue Bash help?
You can mention contacts for the Issue bash in issues or you can use one of our public communication channels to collaborate:
- Gitter
- IRC
Where can I learn how the prize winners are calculated?
GitLab Issue Bash / Prize Winner Calculator
I want to help close issues. Where do I get started?
Steps
- Identifying duplicates issues and mentioning a member of the team
- Attempting to reproduce labelled bugs in a test project on GitLab.com and mention a team member with the results of their investigation (suggesting labels, suggesting closure, etc)
Best place to start
- Not really a suggestion for finding duplicates. Duplicates could exist for any issue and we don't have any particular view that makes finding them easier.
- Existing bugs view will help for determining if old bugs should be closed as non-reproducible or kept open
Best way to help out

Comment on issues about what you have found out and your suggestions for issues, whether to close or keep open and if you've found a duplicate, mention the issue ID. Mention a key contact so that the correct course of action can be taken.
How do I know which labels are right to apply?

We have a guide for labels in the Contributing guide.

Who can participate?

Anyone and everyone! We aim to make the Issue Bash as accessible as possible and offer things to do for contributors with no experience or plenty of experience. We also hope that contributors of all technical abilities can find stuff to work on.
Where can I give feedback about the event itself?

We'd love to hear what you think about the event and whether you have any suggestion for changes that we can make.

Please raise an issue on the Feedback tracker or raise an issue by sending an email.
I want to help categorise issues. Where do I get started?
Steps
- Investigate unlabelled issues with the aim of providing a suitable label and mentioning a team member
Best place to start
- Unlabelled issues
- These issues are all unlabelled and open, they haven't been triaged as of yet
- These issues are listed in order of first raised, so some may no longer be valid, some will be old
- These issues may contain interesting feature proposals or bugs that haven't yet been categorised
Best way to help out

Write a comment on the issue mentioning a key contact and the labels suggested using the label syntax ~label
I want to help fix issues. Where do I get started?
Steps

Fixing known bugs and pain points or shipping existing feature proposals
- Look into the issues labelled as bug , attempt to reproduce and provide a merge request to fix
- Look into the issues labelled as Seeking community contributions feature , understand the use case and create a merge request to provide the new functionality
Best place to start
- Existing bugs
- Seeking community contributions - bugs
- Seeking community contributions - feature proposals
- Ideal First Time Contribution issues
Best way to help out

Submit a merge request with a potential fix for the issue and mention a key contact so that proper labels can be assigned. The normal review process for Community Contributions will then commence.
How do I get started making my first contribution?

We have a guide for contributing to GitLab , please take a look there or ask questions in the Communication channels

Events

2016 GitLab Issue Bash

2016-12-03 to 2016-12-04

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Issue Bash Proposal

GitLab Issue Bash Q1 2017

2017-03-04 to 2017-03-05

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Issue Bash Proposal

GitLab Issue Bash Q2 2017

2017-06-03 to 2017-06-04

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Winners:

Issue Bash Proposal

GitLab Issue Bash Q3 2017

2017-09-02 to 2017-09-03

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Winners:

@aleksandrs-ledovskis

GitLab Issue Bash Q4 2017

2017-12-16 to 2017-12-17

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Winners:

@christiaan.vandenpoel

@anton-akhmerov

GitLab Issue Bash Q1 2018

2018-03-03 to 2018-03-04

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

Winners:

GitLab Issue Bash Q2 2018

2018-06-02 to 2018-06-03

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

GitLab Issue Bash Q3 2018 (postponed)

2018-09-29 to 2018-09-30

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

GitLab Issue Bash Q4 2018

2018-12-01 to 2018-12-02

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher

GitLab Issue Bash Q1 2019

2019-03-02 to 2019-03-03

Contacts:

@markglenfletcher