[Sugar-devel] Issue tracking on Github?

[James Cameron]

On Sun, Apr 03, 2016 at 08:15:26PM -0400, Dave Crossland wrote:
> 
> Hi James!
> 
> On 3 April 2016 at 18:35, James Cameron <[1]quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
> 
>     Because trac provides coverage across multiple repositories, and
>     nothing else gave us that feature at the time.
> 
> This makes good sense, and is good to know :)
>  
> 
>     I'm fine with closing down trac, because;
> 
>     (a) it isn't used in release engineering,
> 
> Is wiki.sugarlabs.org used for tracking release engineering work?

I'm not the release engineer for Sugar, sorry.  Good question though;
probably answer is yes, to some extent.

>     (b) in the past 90 days there have been no tickets created or
>     updated by anyone other than developers.  (see timeline of
>     trac),
> 
> Thanks for pointing this out :)
>  
> 
>     This means we have no users engaging with Sugar Labs through bug
>     reporting; and that's been my observation for some time.
> 
> I feel anxious to read this, and for me this is the primary reason I
> propose consolidating the move to Github - to grow engagement.

Engagement growth is important; but it does not appear to be grown
with issue reporting on GitHub.  It is a distraction.

> As a new contributor to this community, I find Sugar Labs' technical
> development to be much more fragmented than other medium sized libre
> software projects that I've contributed to (eg, Inkscape.)

Yes.  The fragmentation is real.  The cause might be speculated about.

> So I would like to see it consolidated.

Best of luck.  ;-)

Previous attempts at consolidation have had varying success, as can be
seen from the increase in fragmentation.

The number of mailing lists, Wiki, Social Help, IRC channels,
Gitorius, GitHub, ... these are all being used lightly, and the
fragmentation of the community is harmful to survival.

> The move to Github seems to have already started in an uncoordinated
> way,

No, it was well coordinated and led, but it was not followed by many
developers, who had already disengaged.  Some of their activities
remain popular, and sometimes new developers take them on.

> and since so many libre software projects have or are moving to
> it, and one of the (perhaps unstated) goals of Sugar Labs is to
> introduce children to participating in libre software development, I
> think that it helps to use the same collaboration platform as most
> other project use.

I'm expecting another effort to consolidate will cause further
fragmentation.

>     I don't think GitHub issues will work very well; because it
>     isn't easy to move an issue from one repository to another. 
>     With trac, a ticket may be reported against one component, then
>     diagnosed to be fixed in another component.
> 
> Would this work for you: open a new issue in the second component
> with a first comment saying this picks up from the previous issue,
> then in that first issue add a final comment pointing to the new
> location in the first issue and close it :)

A messy workflow.  But first, get users who want to raise issues, then
see how it goes.

> Github makes this easy because it will add backlinks in the
> destination issue's timeline when that issue is mentioned in the
> original; and it will automatically create such links if you type
> user/repo#issueNumber :) 
> 
> As an example of this back-linking, see these 2 links,
> 
> https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/49 (link at end of first post)
> 
> https://github.com/mattlag/Glyphr-Studio/issues/234 (currently link is at
> the bottom :) 
>  
> 
>     Some GitHub project teams can use a single issue tracker for a set of
>     repositories.  endlessm is one such user, with commits referencing a
>     "shell" of issues.
> 
> Oh yes! I remember the announcement of that company's first product,
> but I did not pay any further attention since then (and now) it
> isn't possible to download an iso to play with in a VM. 
> 
> I found sucha  commit - https://github.com/endlessm/
> eos-event-recorder-daemon/commit/4c4704f516adcdf0d287a29b972a49c5978d603f - and
> they are using a private issue tracker, https://phabricator.endlessm.com . I
> feel disappointed :)

Yes, they have moved to phabricator, but they were using a shell/issue
private project on GitHub.

>     These may be features of GitHub that have a purchase price, but I don't
>     know.
> 
> I am pretty sure that Github doesn't price features like that; all
> the features are available to non-paying users. 
> 
> Instead of charging for features, they are charging for privacy; the
> requirement for non-paying users is that all those users repos are
> public; the only thing that they charge for is how many users can
> participate in private repos. https://github.com/pricing/plans
> explains this, and as a Github user for nearly 6 years that is my
> experience, no gotchas. 

Sorry, yes, my haste; privacy is a purchased service.

You earlier wrote:
> I believe that all github users that join a github organization will get
> emailed every issue, pr, and comment for every github project within that
> github organization.

By the way, to be notified from trac, subscribe to
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/bugs

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/