Soft dependency in issue graphs
Re https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/42474#note_115726593 the difference between hard and soft dependencies is that "hard" prevents the closing of tickets and "soft" does not.
In my experience, there are three relations which are useful:
- "Requires" - Directed, hard, counts against completion of parent issue
- "Recommends" - Directed, soft, counts against completion of parent issue
- "Refers" - Directed, soft, does NOT count against completion of parent issue
Let's say you have:
- Run conference-1 (1)
- Run conference (2)
- Book venue (3)
- Book jugglers (4)
- Send over left-over shirts from conference-1 (5)
(2) hard depends on (3) and (5), but you can run the conference without (4) so that's a soft dependency.
(5) refers to (1), which means this is only informational to make it easier to find the other issue without any implication for completeness status.