Re: Savannah bug tracker disabled?

[Ivan Vučica]

Not advocating for Savannah in one way or another, but as I remember it:

tl;dr GitHub move happened because of a series of events: GNA shutdown pushed for git conversion, and GitHub being easy to go to. And despite the opposition, not because we wanted to go there.

And a lot of subprojects elected not to keep issues on it.

Longer:

- move to Git itself was discussed on and (IIRC) off lists for a whole; being able to have the history locally and quickly was a major reason for me personally

- there was pushback for that too (Subversion does have a nicer CLI), so it didn't really happen on its own (Gregory had set up a mirror IIRC, but it was imperfect)

- GNA shutdown came surprisingly and there was a scramble to get the latest archive, which Gregory provided as months (?) newer than what was available on The Internet Archive 

- I sort of rushed to do the conversion that ended up with, what, 50 repos out of one? Things like mapping authors, ensuring branches and tags do turn into branches and tags etc. AND so that existing GitHub mirrors' commit IDs mapped to new ones!

- I went with GitHub because of convenience! not because it's the best place for a GNU project to live in (there was an email asking us not to do it) or because I like its code review or issue system

- I still would have liked to have felt like doing the work to migrate to a GNUstep-owned gitea or gitlab instance, turning GH into a mirror and NOT the primary host/issue tracker — but, I was too lazy to do that the way I would be ok with it, and I also didn't want to take on the burden of being responsible for any downtime or data loss

I remember actively configuring projects to disable issues in cases where Savannah was already in use. I remember wanting to disable pull requests where requested but — frustratingly — not being able to do so. This is because GitHub's PR system was much worse than what's available now (and today it isn't great) and because we eventually wanted to move elsewhere, possibly even back to Subversion and not just another hosting provider.

I don't care much whether issues are hosted on GH. It's very practical for existing users, if they are, but it means being stuck on the platform I myself don't like to use (I am still on Bitbucket, at least until I get time to migrate elsewhere due to Mercurial support shutdown. And I'm not sure where to.)

I barely used Savannah's tracker; very inconvenient contraption. But, I'm no fan of GH and we landed there because of ease of setup, only partially because of existing mirrors and userbase.

Either way, I don't really get to choose what happens anyway as I didn't get around to commit a single line since last year.

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, 08:00 Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:

As most of you may remember, I prefer to stay out of these political discussions. Discussing  code is frustrating enough. But this time I have to step up for Yavor. All he wrote was the an announcement about the bug tracker move would have been helpful. And I would go even further on that point. When we agreed on moving GNUstep to GitHub we also decided to leave the bug tracker on Savannah, at least this is my recollection of the result. Please correct me if I am wrong here. If this is true, a bit more of explanation for this step would be appropriate. Just saying that we no longe host our code in Savannah, even when done in capital letters, isn’t an argument. As some may recall, we did move from GNA to GitHub, our code hasn’t been hosted on Savannah for years.

I really would like to hear an explanation not a rant. That may be acceptable behaviour in some countries at the moment, I hope the GNUstep discussion list is not a place like this.

Fred

> Am 02.11.2019 um 03:42 schrieb Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com>:
>
> I really need to be upfront and frank on this subject because it really upsets me.  I am getting really tired of these petty political arguments getting in the way of making real progress on this project.
>
> I am really not ready to hear "I don't wanna do this... I'm not gonna sign up for this service or that service because of some political reason."  Free Software is a good cause and I have been fighting for it for about 20 years now.  I joined GNUstep in 1999 and I have been adamant in my belief and protection of free software, but I have also watched GNUstep languish because of decisions sometimes made for political ends rather than for TECHNICAL ones.
>
> If you don't want to use clang, fine.... if we leave gcc behind then I guess you'll need to fork.  You don't like github, then I guess you're not writing bugs or contributing to the project.  It's just as simple as that.  Many of these decisions were made by consensus... moving to github was not my idea alone it was myself and the maintainers.  Someone refusing to submit bugs due to the fact that they might need a github account isn't going to change that.
>
> I shut down the savannah bug tracker for a very simple reason.  WE AREN'T HOSTING SOURCE ON SAVANNAH ANYMORE. Contribute, make suggestions to make things better, but for GOODNESS SAKE make them for technical reasons.
>
> For those who believe that we have received no benefit from moving to github, think again.  Algoriddim likely would not be contributing unless we were there and also we have had a number of helpful pull requests due to being here.  So, please, don't kid yourselves.  Being on github has meant more exposure for the project which is a good thing.
>
> So, I'm asking you... if you want to help this project leave your petty political arguments to one side and HELP THE PROJECT and stop WHINING! 
>
> FYI, This rant is not directed at one person, just the culmination of feelings that have been brewing in my mind for a while.
>
> GC
>
>       Sender notified by
> Mailtrack 11/01/19, 10:33:29 PM       
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 11:56 AM Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry to hear that, but the bug tracker at savannah is permanently closed.  I suppose you can use the mailing list.
>       Sender notified by
> Mailtrack 11/01/19, 11:56:16 AM       
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 1:25 AM Yavor Doganov <yavor@gnu.org> wrote:
> Gregory Casamento wrote:
> > Yes, it is disabled to avoid confusion.
>
> An announcement would have been nice.
>
> > Existing bugs can be updated and closed, but no new ones can be
> > added.
>
> I cannot update existing bugs, perhaps only project members can.
> That's OK.
>
> > Track bugs on github where the main development is now happening.
>
> As I don't have a GitHub account and don't plan to make one, I guess I
> can report bugs to bug-gnustep@.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory Casamento
> GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
> http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
> http://ind.ie/phoenix/
>
>
> --
> Gregory Casamento
> GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
> http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
> http://ind.ie/phoenix/