Feature Request: Reduce issues with simple misconfigurations

[karlhorky]

Describe the Feature

I often see issues being posted here where there was a simple misconfiguration, eg:

• misformat "->>" (json operation in Sqlite) #950 (comment)

This takes time and focus to reply to, although a lot of them can be resolved by just using the correct language.

Maybe there would be some ways to reduce these issues, eg:

1. Include an explicit step in the issue template
   1. While we're at it, we could convert to an issue form (example in Next.js bug report issue template)
2. Consider adding a bot that replies to issues
   1. Zod uses Dosu bot for this (and has good things to say about it), which answers based on docs and past issues
3. Require a reproduction
   1. Add a way to pass in code and options via URL to the demo / playground website - similar to Prettier Playground or TypeScript Playground
   2. Require a demo/playground link in the issue

Why do you want this feature?

Already included above

[nene]

Yeah, why not.

For some historical context

This actually happens way less than it used to. The major improvement came from improving the error message the formatter gives when it fails at tokenizing the SQL:

format("select [col] from tbl ");
// results in:
// > Parse error: Unexpected "[col] from" at line 1 column 8.
// > This likely happens because you're using the default "sql" dialect.
// > If possible, please select a more specific dialect (like sqlite, postgresql, etc).

But that doesn't help when there is no error.

Another major source of bogus bug reports has been the vscode-prettier-sql extension. The situation with that was so bad, that I ended up creating a very special error-reporting form just for that.

This has largely eliminated these reports.

For the official VSCode extension there's also a separate form, which specifically asks for the configured dialect.

In summary

I think we can replace the main Formatting bug report issue template also with a similar form.

[karlhorky]

Nice, and what do you think about points 2 (trying something like Dosu) and 3 (require a demo/playground reproduction)?

All of them together could help out in various ways, also beyond this problem. I know that I've wanted to link to a demo/playground with filled-in code before many times before remembering that it doesn't support passing the code over the URL.

[nene]

I think first off we can just add a simple check box to the issue report form:

• I have reproduced the problem in demo page

Being able to link to this playground with code in URL would be a nice to have. If you would like to implement that, then feel free to do so.

Regarding the bot, I'm not sure we have that many bug reports coming in to warrant it. With any bot there will be downsides. Like there will be some additional noise introduced by them. I'd say, let's first do the basic things, like improving the issue reporting template, and if that's not enough then maybe consider a bot.

[nene]

Also, I think some pain from answering recurring issues is actually useful. It'll highlight the places that need improvement. If a bot jumps in and always suggests some workaround for a known issue, then it will lower the perceived need to actually tackle the issue.