[Gluster-Maintainers] Move out of bugzilla to github issues --> for everything...

[Shyam]

On 02/20/2017 01:37 AM, Nigel Babu wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have had concerns about this move for a while. Michael and I are not official
> maintainers of Gluster, but implicitly, we maintain infrastructure for Gluster
> and I have opinions to add from that point of view. We've already published our
> [infra plans for 2017][1]. Having such a large change obviously impacts our
> plans. My opposition to this plan is from the point of view of "Is it worth
> it?".

I believe this is worth it, it simplifies our development workflow, 
gives us the ability to project our longer term plans more effectively, 
and lowers the entry barrier for users to participate in our community.

Further, it also puts back more focus on maintainers and github 
collaborators to be active upstream, thereby creating a more inclusive 
upstream than what we have currently.

>
> * Is it worth changing practically all our scripts and workflow to move to
>   GitHub? Any move will create even more work for the project in terms of work
>   the infra team has to do.

I/we are willing to share/do the work here, if we decide to take the plunge!

> * What about people who use the features of bugzilla not in Github issues? For
>   example, whine. It's a very important for feature for those who want to
>   triage bugs on time. Yes, we can write hacks, but that further leads to "Is
>   it worth it"?

We get some we lose some features, like I already stated, I do 
understand github issues are not a bugzilla replacement. Bugzilla has 
far more features than github, so we can never be the same.

What are we willing to lose? Whine has come up before, but no one (in 
maintainers till now) has spoken up about absolutely needing it.

Mail headers have come up, but again I do not hear a big "no" because 
some headers are not supported.

Triage has been brought up, I would really like to hear/see how that 
query can change from others?

The bugzilla feature richness debate, will really come down to what we 
can live with, and what others cannot live with. I do not see this as a 
deciding factor in the move, unless we are losing something that is 
mandatory to have and we need (are yet?) to surface that.

> * Storage for log files and cores is a story we haven't sorted out yet. We will
>   need to re-invent the wheel in terms of a hosting service for these files
>   (more work).

I think I mentioned keeping BZ open for this as part of the solution, 
and it seems like no further work is required in that case. Does that 
not make a solution for this problem?

> * This is also going to create more work downstream. I bet we have scripts and
>   queries written based on bugzilla. We could argue that we don't have to care
>   about downstream, but if we had a [RACI][2], they'd be under "consulted" or
>   at least "informed".

Yes, Michael raised this point, and this is something we need to close 
before we decide to roll-out (or continue this conversation?) (IOW, 
there is consultation to be done here and that will be done).

> * Have we had conversations with projects of Ansible who do use Github for
>   their pain points? I'm curious to see if we have any learnings. Michael has
>   mentioned that the Github bot that Ansible folks use runs into Github's API
>   limits. I'm reasonably sure we'd run into the same problem.

I learned about this a couple of days back, so to answer, no we have not 
reached out to Ansible folks yet, but we will (once we are sure what we 
want for the *present*, i.e within 2 weeks as 3.11 scope (and possibly 
4.0 scope) will roll out by then).

IOW, if this is the only blocker for this proposal, then I will do that 
ASAP, else I would focus on how to get features completely tracked in 
github and worry about bugs and talking to other communities later.

> * The document discusses security bugs going into bugzilla. How do we make it
>   less confusing for someone filing a bug. What about a bug file which later is
>   found to be a security bug? How do we address that?

For the former, we will make it easier by calling this out in the github 
issue template that we will put up (for reference see [3]). For the 
latter, how does bugzilla handle this today?

FTR, over the course of this conversation is when we have (re)discovered 
how we handle security issues using bugzilla, so more data there would help.

> * If our goal is to make things simpler, we're actually moving in the opposite
>   direction. Issues can be disabled or enabled. Pull requests cannot. It's not
>   often that a project uses Github issues for bug tracking and does not use
>   pull requests. That is confusing to *me*.

That is true, that *most* projects do often use PRs (almost) first. 
Unfortunately, PRs do not give us what we want in terms of reviews, so 
maybe another day.

But I would still argue, that this does not move things in the opposite 
direction. Surely, taking one tool (bugzilla) away from the chain does 
not do that?

In terms of clarity and not confusing people I would again refer to [3] 
which should help people understand that we do not take PRs at the 
moment, and also guide them, at the first opportunity, to use our gerrit 
instance instead.

>
> These is not a conclusive list, but this much already has me convinced that the
> move is **NOT** worth it. In fact, it will cause enough fires to keep us busy
> for 3 to 4 months needlessly. We have enough pieces to work on without adding
> new fires.

I would like a conclusive list (as much as possible, i.e, not stating 
"say everything that you can think of now and say no more later!"), else 
we are dooming this for eternity. A conclusive list helps take this up 
in the future once the issues raised are adequately addressed.

>
> [1]: http://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-infra/2017-February/003194.html
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix
[3] github templates: https://review.gluster.org/16618

>
> --
> nigelb
>
> On Wed, Feb 08, 2017 at 02:04:07PM -0500, Shyam wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In today's maintainers meeting I wanted to introduce what it would take us
>> to move away from bugzilla to github. The details are in [1].
>>
>> Further to this, below is a mail detailing the plan(s) and attention needed
>> to make this happen. Further I am setting up a maintainer meet on Friday
>> 10th Feb, 2017, to discuss this plan and also discuss,
>> - Focus areas: ownership and responsibility
>> - Backlog population into github
>>
>> Request that maintainers attend this, as without a quorum we *cannot* make
>> this move. If you are unable to attend, the please let us know any feedback
>> on these plans that we need to consider.
>>
>> Calendar and plans for moving away from bugzilla to gihub:
>> 1) Arrive maintainer consensus on the move
>>   - 15th Feb, 2017
>>   - This would require understanding [1] and figuring out if all
>> requirements are considered
>>   - We will be discussing [1] in detail on the coming Friday.
>>
>> 2) Announce plans to the larger development and user community for consensus
>>   - Close consensus by 22nd Feb, 2017
>>
>> 3) (request and) Work with Infra folks for worker ant like integration to
>> github instead of bugzilla
>>   - Date TBD (done in parallel from the beginning)
>>
>> <<Assuming we are able to get (3) done by 24th Feb>>
>>
>> 4) Announce migration plans to larger community, calling out a 2 week
>> window, after which bugzilla will be closed (available for historical
>> reasons), and gerrit will also not accept bug IDs for changes
>>   - 27th Feb, 2017
>>
>> 5) Close bugzilla and update gerrit as needed
>>   - 10th Feb, 2017 weekend
>>
>> 6) Go live on the weekend specified in (5)
>>
>> Shyam
>> [1] http://bit.ly/2kIoFJf