Dealing with the Bulk-Closed Android Issues

Somebody (“e…@google.com” for many of them) closed ~11890 issues out at http://b.android.com, marking them as “Obsolete”.

Some of the issues are old, others not so old — it seems like they were bulk-closed if they were opened on December 4th 2013 or earlier. They are not tied to any particular piece of hardware. Personally, I have had issues closed that ranged from bug reports to enhancement requests. Curiously, none of my many documentation bugs seemed to be closed.

While some of the closed issues are indeed “Obsolete”, I can state positively that some are not. Whoever decided to do this rage-closing of issues seems to have done so algorithmically, not tied to whether or not the issue is actually “Obsolete”.

For example, this feature request, to have FileProvider served from assets, is still outstanding, as FileProvider still does not have that as a feature. While I provided that sort of functionality in my StreamProvider, FileProvider could still be outfitted with that functionality. After all, about 4.5 years after I first published my WakefulIntentService, support-v4 and support-v13 gained WakefulBroadcastReceiver, which fills the same niche.

If you opened or are otherwise invested in one of the issues that were bulk-closed, please re-evaluate whether the issue is still valid or not. For example, this issue of mine is truly obsolete, insofar as action bar list and tab navigation are now deprecated, and Google’s philosophy is that bugs in deprecated code are perfectly legitmate.

If you find issues that were marked as “Obsolete” and are definitely still valid, please re-open them. If the originals were widely-starred, consider posting a comment in the now-closed issue pointing to the reopened issue. That way, those still following the concern can follow the new issue, and those seeing the new issue can find the context from the original. Also, this will help us minimize duplicate reopened issues. For example, I opened this issue and cross-linked it with its now-closed counterpart. I will be handling other issues of mine over the next few weeks, if others don’t beat me to them.

I have no problems with Google taking steps to clean up the Android issue tracker. I think it could have been handled with more aplomb. And, as usual, developers in the community have to repair the damage.