Infra: Track subtasks from Iceberg improvement proposal

[ajantha-bhat]

As discussed in the mailing list: https://lists.apache.org/thread/ksgzw5wpqpoxvhlqo9xvn38j5tjb9nxs

[ajantha-bhat]

cc: @jbonofre, @liurenjie1024

[ajantha-bhat]

ping @danielcweeks

[danielcweeks]

I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. At the point your creating an issue, you shouldn't try to define subtasks as nothing has been decided. You can always go back and edit the description or add comments/linked tasks when the proposal is formalized.

I don't think that needs to be part of the template.

[ajantha-bhat]

@danielcweeks: Added in a template with default TODO for people to come back and edit it. Please suggest if there are any better way to track the status of inprogress proposal.

mailing list discussion: https://lists.apache.org/thread/ksgzw5wpqpoxvhlqo9xvn38j5tjb9nxs

[danielcweeks]

@ajantha-bhat I think we're being too heavy-handed here. I don't like including info that we don't expect or plan to have filled out in the template upon submission. Discussion around how to track could be handled separately and as of now, we haven't required a specific approach. Some proposals may not require tracking tasks, others may be much larger efforts that should be managed via projects (e.g. encryption support).

[ajantha-bhat]

Some proposals may not require tracking tasks, others may be much larger efforts that should be managed via projects (e.g. encryption support).

@danielcweeks: The problem with managing via projects is that only committer has access to update it. Not even collaborators. So, it is a problem for normal contributors to update it. Take partition stats for example, collaborating with committers for updating the project board was not easy. (PR review itself doesn't happen actively).

So, I was looking for a different solution to track active projects. This PR is not needed if we make project tab management accessible for common users or have some other solutions.

[Fokko]

Thanks for your patience here, I was touching grass.

A proposal starts with a Google doc, for example, the Geo support: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iVFbrRNEzZl8tDcZC81GFt01QJkLJsI9E2NBOt21IRI

Once there is consensus, the process of splitting it out into separate issues starts. I'm doubtful if having this additional checkbox and TODO label clarifies the process.

In addition to that, we started in Python (apache/iceberg-python#736) and Rust (apache/iceberg-rust#348) to have tracking issues as suggested a while ago on the dev-list, which also seem in conflict with having a tracking issue per proposal.

If the tracking issue works for the partitioned stats, I'm fully okay with that, just not sure if we should add this to the template (since it is easy to add a lot of additional checkboxes here, which might raise the bar of proposing something at all).

[ajantha-bhat]

If not this, we need other ways to solve this problem. Currently a proposal can be split into multiple tasks.
We don't know how many tasks completed and how many pending.

The project tab is great but it needs committer access. So, we need to reduce the restriction on this.
The current project board is also not updated (issues are not moved to closure).
We need to standardize using the project tab for each approved proposal.