Chromium DevTools Slow-Close Policy

goo.gle/devtools-slow-close (go/chrome-devtools:slow-close-policy)

In November 2024, we instituted a slow close policy for Chrome DevTools to automatically maintain hygiene of our bug database. We ended up with a list of over 1650 open bugs and over 750 open feature requests, some of them going back over 10 years, which was not only challenging to maintain, but also made it difficult to determine what's relevant and where we should invest our resources best.

By automatically nudging and closing stale bugs and feature requests, we can reduce this burden, and better communicate to our users what will actually be actioned, and hear from them what remains relevant.

Rules

The criteria for slow close:

• Status: unassigned
• Type: Bug or Feature Request
• Created: over 3 years ago
• Last updated: over 90 days ago
• Popularity: (cc count + vote count) < 10
• No open descendants

Googlers can mark issues as exempt from slow close by adding them to the DevTools-Blintz-Close-Exempt hotlist.

Process

The automation runs on a daily basis, and performs the following steps:

• Issues that meet the criteria outlined above are added to the DevTools-Blintz-Close-Candidate hotlist for closure.
• If 14 days have passed and no updates have occurred, the issue will be closed and moved to the DevTools-Blintz-Close hotlist for recording purposes.
• No more than 25 issues will be updated in a single run.

Implementation

(Googlers only): This is implemented in go/chrome-devtools:blintz.