Re: Subprojects in Savannah

[Amin Bandali]

Hello Luis, all,

Luis Falcon writes:

> Hello, Alfred
>
> Thank you for your mail and for your comments.
>
> On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 04:33:03 -0500
> "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>>    Sorry, I've waited too long. I have started the migration o the GNU
>>    Health mercurial repository to OSDN. It's a pity, but it seems
>> like the requests over these years for the modernization of Savannah
>> have not been taken into consideration. 
>> 
>> They have, but like all volunteer projects -- someone has to do the
>> work.  Would you like to help with that?  Nothing will happen, nor
>> will it help Savannah or the GNU project if everyone does nothing.  
>> 
>
> Please, let's stop using the volunteer job as an excuse. Many of us
> volunteer in different projects, not just technical. Volunteering
> implies commitment.

IMHO it is not an excuse; it's simply the fact of the matter.

> Don't take this personal, is not directed to anyone in particular. What
> I mean is that sysadmin or management o Savannah can not be something
> that we do in our spare time or if we feel like doing it.

The FSF sysadmins watch over the various GNU servers, including
Savannah's array of servers, as part of their job.  However, to my
understanding, non-operational and close management of the actual
services running on the Savannah servers is not part of their duties.
Rather, it's on 'Savannah hackers' to do so, and whether we like it or
not, it is something that is done in their spare time, on a best-effort
basis.

[...]
>> 
>> I suggest that GNU health moves back to savannah, it isn't too late to
>> do this.  
>
> GNU Health is still in Savannah. Mailing lists, bugs, tasks, news, file
> releases are in place and operational.
>
>> What needs to be done for this to happen?
>
> This is the deal... If by tomorrow we have the repositories in GNU, I
> will set the newly created repositories at OSDN as read-only
> Here is the list of repositories:
> https://osdn.net/projects/gnu-health/scm/
>
> This deadline is not capricious. Reverting this decision supposes a big
> effort for me and for the community. Because of the history of the
> project and the relation with GNU, I am willing to give it one more try,
> but we can not halt the project development. At the end of the day, it
> takes two to tango.

IMO that is an *incredibly* tight deadline which could easily be missed.
Anyhow, I did following to create the repositories you had requested:

cd /srv/hg/
ln -s health health-hmis
mkdir health-{hmis-client,fhir-server,thalamus,federation-portal,mygnuhealth}
for d in 
health-{hmis-client,fhir-server,thalamus,federation-portal,mygnuhealth}; \
  do cd "$d" && hg init && cd .. && chown -R root:health "$d"; done

I made health-hmis a symlink to health; but for some reason it was not
being picked up by hgweb. I had to add health-hmis = /srv/hg/health-hmis
into /etc/mercurial/hgwebdir.conf (and now it appears near the top, far
from other health-* repos).   Bob, any thoughts/ideas as to why?

Luis, if the repo names with dashes are not acceptable and you prefer
subdirectories under health/ (for example, health/thalamus instead of
health-thalamus), we may be able to arrange for it, but it would likely
require adding a .hgignore file in the 'health' repository to ignore the
said subdirectories, so as to help avoid accidentally committing changes
in those repositories through the parent repository.  What do you think?

> We need the freedom to manage our computing resources at GNU.org.
> It's ironic, but we're failing on the very concept that we want the
> community to follow, the freedom to manage their computing resources.
>
> For instance, we should, as project administrators, have shell access to
> create and manage the needed resources, or an alternative that won't
> require us having to ask the GNU sysadmins to do it for us. Requesting
> help from sysadmins should be a last resort, in case of emergency. The
> management of our projects should be done by ourselves.

I agree that the general workflow(s) around Savannah could be improved.
But this is what we have right now; please let's try our best to keep
working with each other and continue moving things forward with it,
until such time that a more convenient solution is available. :-)

>> 
>>    I even asked in the meantime to manually create some additional
>>    repositories, but I never got an answer.
>> 
>> Did you remind them?  It might be that they simply missed it.
>
> How many times? I asked to sysadmin to create the repos, then I was
> re-directed to Savannah hackers, start from zero again, to reach this
> dead-end, where I had no other choice than to host the repositories
> outside GNU.org 

Please see my earlier explanation in this message about the
sysadmin@gnu.org folks not being the ones best suited to handle such
requests.  These requests should come directly to us Savannah hackers,
either via this very mailing list, or via the
https://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?group=administration 'Support'
tracker, which sends a copy of each request and its replies to this
list.

> I feel awkward asking for things over and over again. I don't want to
> bother anyone.
[...]

If you don't get a reply within, say, a week, please feel free to send
another email to bump your request.  As Alfred mentioned, it could be a
simple case of it being missed.  This is also true and common practice
for the mailing list(s) of many other parts of GNU.

>
> Best,
> Luis

Thank you for your patience, and for bearing with us as we work through
this.

Best,
amin

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