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Axom Issue Triage #1977

Description

@rhornung67

I asked Claude to review all issues in the Axom GitHub repo and to generate a report on which issues are fixed and could be closed, which are outdated, and which should be high priority, etc. Here's what it did. Hopefully, we can use this to do some house cleaning and planning. We did something similar in RAJA (thanks @davidbeckingsale ) and we were able to close over 40 issues in short order.

Note that I basically cut-and-pasted the report Claude generated. This needs some work to refine. Anyway, it's a start.

If folks have thoughts/ideas about doing a more useful analysis on this, please share in a comment

Axom GitHub Issues Analysis Report

Generated: September 3, 2026
Total Issues Analyzed: 102 (PRs excluded)


Executive Summary

This report analyzes all open issues in the Axom GitHub repository. Issues have been categorized into three main groups:

  1. High Priority Issues (2): Active bugs, user requests, or recent enhancements requiring immediate attention
  2. Outdated/Inactive Issues (80): Issues that are 2+ years old with no recent activity, likely candidates for closure or archival
  3. Potentially Closable Issues (13): Issues that are 1+ year old with no recent updates, should be reviewed for closure

1. High Priority Issues

These are active issues that require immediate attention due to being recent bugs, user requests, or active enhancements.

#1971: Problem with multimat and cuda@13.2

Link: #1971
Labels: bug, cuda, multimat, compiler
Created: 2026-08-28 | Last Updated: 2026-08-28
Age: 5 days | Days Since Update: 5

Why High Priority:

  • Active bug requiring resolution

Description: @tomstitt report the following error w/ multimat in cuda@13.2 using axom@d732a8e <axom>/src/axom/multimat/multimat.cpp:982:487: error: 'RangeSetType' is a protected member of 'axom::multimat::MultiMat' Our CI currently successfully builds/tests against cuda@13.1...


#713: Allow Slic macros that are guarded by AXOM_DEBUG to be turned on another way

Link: #713
Labels: App Integration, Slic, User Request, Reviewed
Created: 2021-11-11 | Last Updated: 2026-08-10
Age: 1756 days | Days Since Update: 23

Why High Priority:
d/Inactive Issues (Candidates for Closure)

These issues are 2+ years old with no activity in over 2 years. They should be reviewed and likely closed or archived.

Very Old Issues (3+ years): 62

...and 42 more very old issues

Old Issues (2-3 years): 18

...and 3 more old issues


3. Potentially Closable Issues

These issues are 1+ year old with no recent updates. They should be reviewed to determine if they're still relevant.

#1339: Address outstanding tests and examples that rely on unified memory

Link: #1339
Labels: Quest, GPU, Reviewed
Created: 2024-05-13 | Last Updated: 2025-05-20
Inactive for: 470 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1309: Request for additional Primal::Vector methods

Link: #1309
Labels: Core, User Request, Reviewed, usability
Created: 2024-04-03 | Last Updated: 2024-09-24
Inactive for: 708 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1282: Investigate HIP performance difference with spatial indices

Link: #1282
Labels: Quest, Spin, GPU, cuda
Created: 2024-02-21 | Last Updated: 2024-09-19
Inactive for: 713 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1280: Add a toss4 host-config for clang-ifort

Link: #1280
Labels: Testing, Reviewed, compiler
Created: 2024-02-21 | Last Updated: 2025-01-13
Inactive for: 597 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1236: Code working with blueprint mesh should verify bit widths of data

Link: #1236
Labels: App Integration, Reviewed
Created: 2023-12-08 | Last Updated: 2025-05-19
Inactive for: 471 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1235: Create a multidimentional array inlet field

Link: #1235
Labels: User Request, Inlet, Reviewed
Created: 2023-12-08 | Last Updated: 2025-05-19
Inactive for: 471 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1185: Add or delete constructors from primal::Plane

Link: #1185
Labels: Primal, User Request, cuda
Created: 2023-09-11 | Last Updated: 2025-05-22
Inactive for: 468 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#1028: Fix using-with-cmake and using-with-blt examples on Windows

Link: #1028
Labels: CI, Build system, User Request, Windows
Created: 2023-02-13 | Last Updated: 2025-07-21
Inactive for: 408 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#941: Add all component headers to using-with-cmake test

Link: #941
Labels: Testing, CI
Created: 2022-10-17 | Last Updated: 2025-06-23
Inactive for: 436 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#787: Remaining Issues with HIP

Link: #787
Labels: TPL, Build system, Reviewed, Hip
Created: 2022-02-08 | Last Updated: 2024-09-19
Inactive for: 713 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#772: Allow user to control lifetime of Buffer object

Link: #772
Labels: App Integration, Sidre, Documentation, design
Created: 2022-01-24 | Last Updated: 2025-01-13
Inactive for: 597 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#763: Configuring axom with architecture-specific compiler flags

Link: #763
Labels: Core, Build system, Reviewed, Performance
Created: 2022-01-07 | Last Updated: 2025-01-13
Inactive for: 597 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


#759: Add AMD intrinsics for axom's bit utilities

Link: #759
Labels: GPU, Reviewed, compiler
Created: 2022-01-07 | Last Updated: 2025-05-22
Inactive for: 468 days

Reason: No activity for over 1 year - should verify if still relevant


Recommendations

Immediate Actions

  1. Address High Priority Issues: Focus on the 2 high priority issues, especially:
    • #1971: Multimat CUDA 13.2 compilation bug
    • #713: Slic debug macros enhancement (appears to have a PR #1976 addressing it)

Short-term Actions (Next 30 days)

  1. Review Potentially Closable Issues: The 13 issues with 1+ year of inactivity should be reviewed:
    • Contact original requesters to verify if still needed
    • Close issues that are no longer relevant
    • Update issues that are still valid with current status

Medium-term Actions (Next 90 days)

  1. Clean Up Outdated Issues: The 80 issues with 2+ years of inactivity are clogging the issue tracker:
    • Create a systematic review process
    • Consider creating a "stale" label and bot
    • Archive or close issues that are no longer relevant
    • Convert still-relevant long-term issues into feature requests or roadmap items

Process Improvements

  1. Implement Issue Hygiene Practices:
    • Set up automated stale issue detection
    • Require periodic updates on long-running issues
    • Create clear criteria for closing inactive issues
    • Use milestones and projects to track progress

Statistics Summary

Category Count Percentage
High Priority Issues 2 2.0%
Potentially Closable (1+ year) 13 12.7%
Outdated/Inactive (2+ years) 80 78.4%
Other Active Issues 7 6.9%
Total Issues 102 100%

Issues by Label (Top 10)

  • Reviewed: 49 issues
  • Build system: 25 issues
  • Quest: 17 issues
  • User Request: 16 issues
  • TPL: 14 issues
  • usability: 14 issues
  • enhancement: 13 issues
  • Documentation: 12 issues
  • GPU: 11 issues
  • App Integration: 10 issues

Conclusion

The Axom project has a significant backlog of inactive issues (80 issues that are 2+ years old with no recent activity). This represents 78.4% of all open issues. A systematic cleanup effort is recommended to improve issue tracking and project management. The high priority issues are manageable at just 2 issues, allowing the team to focus on cleanup efforts.

Recommended Priority:

  1. Fix the 2 high priority issues
  2. Review and close the 13 potentially closable issues
  3. Systematically review and archive/close the 80 outdated issues
  4. Implement automated issue hygiene processes

Activity

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