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Hello all, |
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On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 20:45:10 +0200 Michał Górny wrote: |
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> The second issue that may need Council's attention is developers' |
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> attitude towards pull request source via GitHub. |
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> |
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> One and a half month since enabling it, we already had almost 150 pull |
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> requests from Gentoo users (and a few Gentoo developers who use this as |
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> a collaboration tool). Sadly, some developers not only refuse to use |
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> GitHub (which is an acceptable choice) but also have very negative |
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> attitude towards users submitting pull requests and the developers |
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> helping with them. |
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> |
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> The point is, if we want users to submit pull requests, we should be |
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> handling them. Then we can't really agree on some developer refusing to |
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> look at the request, and requesting the user to re-send it some other, |
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> less convenient way. Or another developer just silently ignoring every |
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> request and rudely responding to pings. |
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> |
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> Since the amount of work necessary to proxy between users |
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> and developers who refuse to use GitHub is huge, I have prepared |
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> a script that opens Bugzilla bugs for GitHub pull requests |
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> and bidirectionally copies comments between them, therefore allowing |
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> Gentoo developers to handle pull requests via Bugzilla at their |
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> convenience. However, it is currently waiting for review and approval |
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> by Robin before it will get deployed. |
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> |
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> But even then, I need to make sure the developers will actually use it |
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> politely. Developers can't really close those bugs 'because it's |
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> GitHub', or 'attach a patch', or 'duplicate of #nnnnnn' (because |
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> it's a synced bug, it can't be magically coerced into existing bug). |
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> In fact, I mailed bug-wranglers about this already but I got no reply. |
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I'd like to ask the Council to consider pros and cons of this issue |
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with extreme care. Benefits and dangers of the integration with the |
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proprietary GitHub service were discussed many times already, |
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starting from [1]. |
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While the GitHub integration allows to receive a bit more |
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contributions, it contains long-term dangers of the Gentoo Social |
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Contract violation and loosing independence of the infrastructure |
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and the development workflow itself. |
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|
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I propose that we should draw a line which should not be crossed to |
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satisfy both the Social Contract and freedom of people to use |
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whatever tools they want, including GitHub. As a first approximation |
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I suggest the following: |
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All connections with external infrastructure should be done in a |
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such way, that in case this external infrastructure will instantly |
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and permanently disappear, we should not loss any valuable data |
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and metadata, including commits, commit history, discussions, |
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patches, issues, bug reports and so on. |
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|
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As far as I understand Mgorny's proposal, it implies that pull |
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request issues and patches will be mirrored on bugzilla, but not |
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patches themselves. In my opinion this is not acceptable, since |
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violates both the Social Contract (by dependence on propietary |
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metadata, such as GitHub issues (and pull request is a special type |
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of issue on GitHub)) and Bugzilla's policy of having all patches |
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attached to the Bugzilla. |
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I honestly do not understand why developers should be forced to |
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violate the Social contract under the excuse of "being polite" to |
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GitHub contributors nor why such actions should be allowed at all. |
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[1] |
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https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/27e8b99db6fcd2654fc2548a605f0b70 |
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|
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Best regards, |
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Andrew Savchenko |
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