Hi everybody, in the company i’m currently working for we are facing some strange behavior as follows: every day I search for Blocker&Critical issues created the day before so we can work with the developer in charge and promote a fast resolution. Yesterday a found a blocker issue supposedly created on 07/26 by a guy that left the company almost 2 years ago.
After double checking in github related PRs, i found no modifications affecting mentioned class for at least 18 months ago, so i’m pretty confused here since i don’t know the rationale of this issue being marked as created in that date.
Could you help me explaining where to search for some clues?
Thanks in advance for your cooperation
Javier
Hi Javier,
Welcome to the community!
What rule is the issue from? It’s entirely possible for legitimately new issues to be raised in old code. For instance, let’s say you update methodA so that it might now return null . Old calls to methodA must now null-check return values before dereferencing. If they don’t, new null pointer issues will legitimately be raised on those old calls.
Another case where new issues can show up on old code is when your analysis configuration changes. Let’s say you remove an exclusion, so that old code that was previously ignored is now analyzed. Those are newly-raised - and legitimately “new” - issues on old code. Or say your analysis configuration changed so that dependencies that were previously unavailable to analysis are now included. Those newly-provided dependencies give a deeper understanding of the code, which allows previously overlooked issues to be newly raised.
You may think that some of these issues should be backdated, but issues are only backdated in certain circumstances. The docs explain how issues are determined to be new, and when they’re backdated.
Ann