[Projects Beta] Milestones Across Repositories

[mitchelsellers]

To fully manage projects, across repositories the concept of a "Shared Milestone" would be far easier to manage. Consider the situation where you have a project that is comprised of multiple repositories, but you are working towards a common target (Q4 2021 Release) for example.

It would be ideal to be able to set a milestone at the organization level, and use it within each of these so that the board could show the milestone column and then you group the board by those items.

[OldManFroggy]

I second this, right now I have to create milestones across repositories which is frustrating and prone to error. and a pretty common use case.

[kaishin]

This must be the aspect I am struggling the most with. For now I have duplicated the same milestones across several repositories but that completely beats the purpose.

[lucianobargmann]

Same here. Frustrating and beats on my head: why haven't I seen this issue before moving my project management to Github?

And as we are on this, I would request the same for custom labels.

[jeremydiba]

Agree on the labels

[mhm13dev]

agree for labels

[ignacio-borrajo]

Agree on the milestones and labels

[isanchez-ng]

Agree on the milestones and labels!

[EmiliaH]

I also agree with this suggestion! I would really like to be able to assign issues from different repositories to the same milestone!

For example we use submodules in a parent repo, and thus we need attach an issue in the submodule to a milestone in the parent repo.

[ignacio-borrajo]

We also use submodules and the day I realized about the milestones, regret to move all our repos to GitHub

[HHK1]

Is this item in the roadmap going to help solve this issue? github/roadmap#278

[SpoonOfDoom]

Is this item in the roadmap going to help solve this issue? github/roadmap#278

I don't think so, unless I'm misunderstanding it. It still would still mean that I have to duplicate a milestone across all repositories that are involved in a project.

[tleef]

This is the one you want github/roadmap#276

[karlhorky]

I just came here to also offer this as feedback - I would like project-wide (cross-repo) milestones for tracking deadlines and product launches that deal with code in multiple repos.

[karlhorky]

If you just want a column, I realized it's possible to add a column (eg. called "Project Milestone" or "Global Milestone") in the table view now (choose a "Single Select" type):

However, I don't think you can get reports about how many issues are done vs how many open, like regular milestones can show.

[karlhorky]

Just implemented this, and it gets us most of the way to what we want, so far!

[brylie]

Yes, I'm taking this approach as a stop-gap as well.

[shaupt131]

Hmm, interesting approach. Thanks for the suggestion, going to try this out in the meantime.

[ignacio-borrajo]

Yes but no, it is a patch to a real problem I think, no due date, no reports on how many issues are open and close, ...

[thclark]

+1000000. We're desperate for cross-repository milestones - which seem like such a simple thing they should have been done years ago. It's very difficult to implement something satisfactory without multiple actions and third party plugins - and even then there's nothing (even ZenHub) that solves the problem.

Without that, Projects Beta really isn't any more powerful (as far as I can see) than bookmarking URLs of regular projects with different filters activated. With it, Projects beta would become a self-sufficient (although admittedly lightweight) project management tool.

[markborges]

I also think this is a great idea. It seems most of us are using Milestones for controlling Releases, and if a Project can support multiple repositories, then it should definitely support common Milestones among them.

[terracoda]

Definitely need milestones that cross repositories.

[morpheus7CS]

Hi,

we have recently started using Github Projects (Beta). Our aim is to move the entire issue tracking and roadmap and development work management to Github, where our code resides. We love many of the features, but we also have some additional questions that will help us in making this change possible.

Milestones on the organizational level would help us a lot since we are dealing with 3 repository setup (API repository, client app repository, and admin app repository) and many of the changes touch at least two if not all three.

Please implement this soon as it would definitely bring the offering to a whole new level.

Kind regards,
g

[krs13]

Exactly what we're doing - we have multiple repos for different areas of our platform and I would like to tie the issues together in Releases, which is something that cross-repo milestones would accomplish.

[brylie]

As an aside, I think GitHub's lack of cross-repository project management features has been one of the primary factors driving the monorepo trend.

[thclark]

This is very insightful. I hadn't thought of that. But being presently in the middle of a difficult extraction of a monorepo into more sensible pattern, I look back and think yes - that was one of the driving factors in my earlier decision.

[OldManFroggy]

yeah, I moved from a mono repo once I hit 50+ microservices in different languages, getting things to work dev wise on an isolated microservices cost soo much time and training with developers and tooling it was just not worth it in the end. (mainly due to GO and how it deals with modules, the same for D, and to a lessor case RUST)

but for good high-level product/team/work management milestones across repo's would make GitHub issues one of the top if not the top tool for managing code/issues of complex projects. (really pains me, that I have to use another issue tool and only get pull updates in it, and if someone does a GitHub issue on a repo, it needs 2 way integrations (most svck) or you need to manually sync and move things...

Same goes for a good 20 or so companies I have worked with in the past couple years... all are paying more for another tool, due to this single issue. (inc. myself...)

[KnutResys]

Agreed, we are pushing towards monorepos now much for this reason

[kalanchoej]

Also looking for a project based / cross-repo milestone solution.

[ericnelson]

+1 to this feature. Need it ASAP

[JonBushby77]

+1 Setting up milestones and labels, etc in every repository isn't ideal.

[ghost]

FYI: It’s on GitHub’s public roadmap as github/roadmap#276, currently planned in Future. See Issues-view

Though it already got a lot of traction since 2016! on dear-github/dear-github#93. Actually the most 👍🏿 up-votes (on open issues):

Duplicates

• "Milestones should live at the project level" (#8073)

[gabriel-r]

@mitchelsellers you may want to add links/answer from @DominikGM to your original post so people are encouraged to vote up on the right places.

[gilmorera]

Do we need to get our pitchforks? +1

[jimrazmus]

+1 Setting up a consistent set of milestones, status, and labels in numerous repositories is extremely cumbersome.

[treeder]

Do any of you have access to the new GitHub projects? I think you wouldn't be complaining about this feature if you did.

[CdrMarks]

@treeder I do. I think they call the older offering Projects (classic).

I'm curious what object you use for the milestone?

[treeder]

Yes, org level projects: https://github.com/features/issues

There's various ways to organize it, you could have one project per milestone, or one project and have a column per milestone, or one project and one issue per milestone with a "task list" in the issues with all the milestone tasks.

This new stuff is 10x better than the old milestones.

[CdrMarks]

Here's a use case I'd like to implement.

I have the following set up:

• Issues from several projects can be seen in one org level project named Scrum.
  • The custom fields in that project are currently: status, sprint, and story points.
  • Various views used to plan and execute sprints
• Issues from a repository named roadmap in a separate org level project named Roadmap.
  • The custom fields in that project are currently: quarter
  • In each roadmap issue, I include a bulleted list of the issues from the other projects (I'm using these like epics)

An idea I have is the following:

• In the Scrum project, add a custom field of type Single select called Epic.
• For each epic give it a short name that is based on the issue name from the roadmap repository. Also add in the epic's description the URL of the roadmap issue.
• In each roadmap issue, include a link to the scrum project using a view filtered to only show this epic's issues.

I'm curious how what I described above can be achieved in one project.

[treeder]

You can easily filter views by that epic field and links can have the filters in them:

If it all has to be in one project, you could also label the main roadmap issues as "roadmap" then filter those out for a roadmap view (there's even a view type called roadmap that's like a Gantt chart).

Best thing to do is just try it and you'll probably figure out a way to do what you want.

[treeder]

[DeveloperAlly]

+100000000 Do we have any word on if they have scheduled this at least?

I guess we better not hold our breath - people have been asking for almost 10 years -> dear-github/dear-github#93

[caligo-erik]

Not holding my breath, but I still hope for this feature.

[luisarojas]

+1

[djcesar]

+1

[gparker]

+1

[mtfunder]

+1

[imricardosilva]

+1

[AgnesAndersson]

+1

[junkim012]

please!

[m00nl1ghtP00l]

+1

[AmitKKhanchandani]

+1

[Mayurbarve]

+1 Setting up a consistent set of milestones, status, and labels in numerous repositories is extremely cumbersome.

[rgbsys]

+1