Marvin

“This is the sort of thing you lifeforms enjoy, is it?”

• Marvin, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Marvin is a wonderfully charming, yet very depressed robot. A lot of projects have issue trackers that feel out of control. Consider these other quotes, and how you feel when doing issue triage:

Marvin: I’ve been talking to the main computer.
Arthur: And?
Marvin: It hates me.

Marvin: I have a million ideas, but, they all point to certain death.

Marvin: This will all end in tears.

Marvin: I’ve calculated your chance of survival, but I don’t think you’ll like it.

Marvin: Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I’m standing?

So why do issue trackers make us feel this way?

1. You can’t give people permission to only do triage, they must also have commit bit.
2. If you ignore your tracker, it becomes a graveyard of old issues. Feels bad.
3. Labels are wonderful, but more complex setups can be painful. For example, ensuring that a “Bug” and “Feature” tag are mutually exclusive, or setting up a pipeline of issues tracking progress.

Basically, Issues are wonderfully simple, but if you want a little bit more, it can hurt. Marvin can help.

Using Marvin

Right now, you can’t. Sorry. Still working on the initial stuff. The intention will be to build and release something that supports giving others traige rights without themselves needing commit bit. In other words:

1. You give Marvin commit bit on your project.
2. You tell Marvin who can triage your project.
3. Those users use Marvin to do issue triage, and he does it on their behalf.