What is the proper way to handle code conflicts between open issues on the same project page?

Question

I'm fairly new to GitLab and git in general and I'm trying to learn the proper way to handle contributing to module issues in Drupal.

I have been working on these two issues: Third party settings are migrated to the state in a wrong way, Fix Scheduled Hour Time Zone Conversion.

I have a third issue, Add support for more schedule frequencies, that has some overlapping code and I need access to some functions that were defined in the other two issues. My first thought was to merge the branches from each issue into the branch for this issue and mark them as related issues. Is that the correct way to handle this, or should I be doing something else?

Answer 1

In the dependent branch, you can merge in the code from the other branches, with the understanding that you may have to rework things if the code in the other issues is reworked before it gets committed.

In addition to "Related" issues, Drupal.org has the concept of "Parent" and "Child" issues, which can be useful when one issue is clearly dependent on another. However, if it is not a clear parent-child relationship, marking the issues as related is also fine.

To indicate one issue depends on another that needs to be committed first, the most important thing is to set the Status of the dependent issue to Postponed on Drupal.org, and mark the merge request for the dependent issue, if any, as a Draft on GitLab (this is a checkbox on the create/edit merge request form).

Then, make sure that in the issue summary of the dependent issue, it clearly says something like "Postponed on [#123] and [#456]" so that people checking the issue on Drupal.org can quickly confirm what the dependencies are. Note that the special syntax [#123] allows you to link from one issue to another on Drupal.org (the issue number is the number following issues in https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/1234567).

Answer 2

1. Usually, it is the same as any other software projects and their code base (outside Drupal).

2. One by one issue - merge the first, a Major change or important Bug, then ask the other issues' resolvers to update their fixes / patches / code changes.

3. Merge the next change, solve the next issue, if there is code conflicts again repeat point 2. and 3. again.

4. Publish the official new Drupal project (module) release version.