Part of what makes GitHub great for collaborative software projects is its support for linking disparate pieces of information together. Some of this happens automatically, such as when you create a pull request from a series of commits on a branch. Other times, you can use the interface to manually link pull requests or projects to issues using the dropdown options.
Autolinked references
To make it even easier to cross-link different items throughout your project, GitHub offers a shorthand syntax. For example, if you leave a comment like Duplicate of #8, GitHub will recognize that #8 is an issue and create the appropriate link for you.
An autolinked issue
In our scenario, these links could prove very valuable for ramping up if someone thought ahead to leave the context. For example, the current state of the sidebar may have had some known issues related to a JavaScript dependency. If the issue with that dependency was discussed in another issue that didn’t explicitly mention “sidebar”, then it would be difficult to find. However, if someone had thought ahead to link the issue in the discussion, then it could save you a lot of time now. Keep that in mind the next time you’re documenting issues and pull requests.
Learn more about Autolinked references and URLs .