Theia: proposal: feature to report issues directly in the IDE

[lmcbout]

Feature Description:

It would be nice to have under the Help menu a button to call github and create new issues directly. Similar as what is available for VSCode. So the end-user does not have to leave the Theia-IDE to report a new issue or new features.
See a screen shot of VSDCODE report issue page

[vince-fugnitto]

@lmcbout I'm not sure it can be done in such a generic way that can be useful for end-users?
Would it not be better for applications to define their own way of handling issues?

For example, Gitpod has created the following menu item for their case:

[lmcbout]

I think it could done as in VSCode, i don't see why not. The user should have the possibility to report new bug/features, attach a screenshot or add a trace so the developper of Theia can have possibility of more data collected to reproduce a problem

[vince-fugnitto]

I think it could done as in VSCode, i don't see why not. The user should have the possibility to report new bug/features, attach a screenshot or add a trace so the developper of Theia can have possibility of more data collected to reproduce a problem

@lmcbout maybe I am overthinking it, but I feel it's up to application developers to define their own standards when interacting with end-users and they would be the ones to implement this feature for their products. I don't see the value of it being directly included in the framework unless it is easily extensible. We must remember that vscode is a product while we are an open framework.

[marcdumais-work]

+1 for a "report issue" or such menu entry as suggested by @vince-fugnitto . When used we attempt to open the repo's issue tracker url, reading it from the standard bugs entry in the product's package.json.

For the example application here we would only need to add that field in their package.json and point to the GH issue tracker. It would work OOTB for most Theia-based product and doesn't assume anything about the issue tracker. Note that it's legit for the bugs field to contain an email address rather than a URL, but we could chose to do nothing if it's not a URL.

[akosyakov]

Maybe we can add it to the getting started extension to use in theia-apps? Generally it is specific to an end product and an issue should be always verified there first.

[marcdumais-work]

Maybe we can add it to the getting started extension to use in theia-apps?

@theia/getting-started is used in the main repo's example application as well. Though we could leave the bugs field undefined in that app's package.json if we do not want it functional (yet?) for that case. @vince-fugnitto WDYT about adding this to that extension?

Generally it is specific to an end product and an issue should be always verified there first.

Agreed. If the issue turns-out to be one with Theia framework, an app's creators can open it here on the behalf of their users.

[vince-fugnitto]

I was thinking that if we were to do something, it should simply be done in @theia/api-samples as an example for application developers to reference when creating their own solution based on their specific needs.

Is it something we want to be contributed directly by the framework, and if so, what should it display/do?