get-metadata: should we accept "Fixes" and "Refs" without ":"?

[vsemozhetbyt]

Refs: in the nodejs/node#17295, the Fixes https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/17294 commit message line was not included in the metadata.

[joyeecheung]

I am a bit afraid this would give many false positives and we have to end up with struggling with natural language processing (I don't have problem with that but it's a really big undertake if you want to get it right). So the easiest solution is: if people don't follow the format, just ignore it.

[vsemozhetbyt]

@joyeecheung I am a bit concerned that people may use GitHub syntax that does not require :

https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-using-keywords/#closing-an-issue-in-the-same-repository

[Tiriel]

Well, they might indeed, but the syntax only works when the branch is merged according to the doc you linked, I don't know if it works with our process.

Anyway, I'm +1 with @joyeecheung , the formatting exists for a reason IMHO, I don't think we should make allowance or we risk having more problems than now.

[targos]

is it detected by a regexp now?

[joyeecheung]

@targos Yea it's deteced by regular expressions in lib/links.js, with some JSdom queries to get the URL out of the href attributes.

[targos]

What about something like this?

/(Close[ds]?|Fix(e[ds])?|Resolve[sd]?)\s*:?\s*https?:\/\/(\S+)/i;

I think we require full URLs already so this should be fine and without false positives.

That said, I'm not sure we should encourage this syntax. Maybe it could be normalized by get-metadata.

[gibfahn]

That said, I'm not sure we should encourage this syntax. Maybe it could be normalized by get-metadata.

Agreed, having get-metadata be forgiving in what it accepts is good, but it should only output the one canonical form.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open many days with no activity. It will be closed soon unless the stale label is removed or a comment is made.

[codebytere]

i'd say we should close this - I see no real reason to deviate from syntax we've been adhering to for years. Feel free to open again if yall have other thoughts!