Re: This project should move to github/gitlab

[Paul Cercueil]

Hi Marc,

GNU Savannah is good for hosting git repositories, and that's basically 
all. It is terrible for collaborative development. It only sort-of 
works if coupled with e.g. bugzilla, and a mailing list.

As you say, the primary problem is that it needs an active maintainer. 
The second problem is that we spoiled kids are used to CI, and a CI to 
build and test for all architectures would be extremely desirable in 
this particular case. So even if the maintainer was active, a switch to 
github/gitlab would still make a lot of sense.

Cheers,
-Paul


Le mar., févr. 15 2022 at 15:09:26 +0100, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen 
<marc.nieper+gnu@gmail.com> a écrit :
> The problem is not primarily where the project is hosted; GNU Savannah
> works very well for a lot of successful projects; the problem is, as
> it seems, a project maintainer who has been not as active as would
> have been healthy for this project.
>
> While some may not care whether a project is hosted on Github or not,
> others may do and we should respect them as well. The guidelines of
> the GNU project are less questionable than responsible for why we have
> such a rich ecosystem of free software nowadays.
>
> In any case, I'd suggest - if the current maintainer remains silent -
> to contact the GNU project and ask for a possible co-maintainership or
> replacement. Forking this project on Github or somewhere else should
> be the last resort.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marc
>
> Am Di., 15. Feb. 2022 um 14:38 Uhr schrieb Franz Flasch 
> <franz.flasch@gmx.at>:
> >  It got merged! So it seems there are actually people maintaining 
> > this.
> >
> >  However, I'm still not convinced that is really an official place to
> >  contribute to. It looks official, but I am not really sure about 
> > that.
> >
> >  Also I saw that according to GNU github.com should not be used:
> >  https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html
> >
> >  But honestly, I would not care about that, I really like GNU, but I
> >  surely don't follow all of their guidelines.
> >
> >  IMHO it's better to have place where (new, young) developers can
> >  contribute to than having a dying SW just because of questionable
> >  guidelines.
> >
> >
> >  Anyway, how can we find out if this is official? If not, I would 
> > prefer
> >  to host our own fork on github.
> >
> >
> >  Seems we are the only ones caring about GNU Lightning currently, as 
> > the
> >  mailing list also does not seem to be very active...
> >
> >
> >  Regards,
> >  Franz
> >
> >
> >  On 2/14/22 13:22, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> >  > Hi,
> >  >
> >  > There is already this repository:
> >  > https://github.com/gitGNU/gnu_lightning
> >  >
> >  > This looks like the right place. However I don't know who manages 
> > this
> >  > repository.
> >  >
> >  > It is very outdated, so I created a PR to sync it to the latest 
> > master:
> >  > https://github.com/gitGNU/gnu_lightning/pull/1.
> >  >
> >  > This way we'll also see if there are people actually maintaining 
> > this
> >  > repo.
> >  >
> >  > Cheers,
> >  > -Paul
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > Le ven., févr. 4 2022 at 23:16:57 +0100, Franz Flasch
> >  > <franz.flasch@gmx.at> a écrit :
> >  >> Hi Paul!
> >  >>
> >  >> I totally agree. I started using GNU lightning just recently and 
> > I think
> >  >> it is great. I think moving it to github/gitlab could breathe 
> > life into
> >  >> lightning again.
> >  >>
> >  >> Personally I prefer github, but gitlab would also be fine.
> >  >>
> >  >> Regards,
> >  >> Franz
> >  >>
> >  >>
> >  >>
> >  >> On 2/4/22 10:04 PM, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> >  >>> Hi,
> >  >>>
> >  >>> Sending patches via email works, if there is someone on the 
> > other end
> >  >>> applying them, which does not seem to be the case for that 
> > project
> >  >>> anymore. I gave up trying to upstream some patches after 3 
> > attempts
> >  >>> without feedback, and I'm not the only one in this case, it 
> > seems.
> >  >>>
> >  >>> I don't blame the maintainer, who may have very little time on 
> > his/her
> >  >>> hands, but this situation will eventually lead to the death of 
> > the
> >  >>> project, if those who want to contribute don't have the means 
> > to do so.
> >  >>>
> >  >>> So let's move the project to github/gitlab, which will allow 
> > PRs to be
> >  >>> *visible* and not buried in a mountain of emails, and bug 
> > reports to
> >  >>> actually be seen.
> >  >>>
> >  >>> Last but not least... Improving Lightning right now is a real 
> > pain,
> >  >>> because truth to be told, nobody will run the tests on all 
> > archs after
> >  >>> each commit. But a CI instance on github/gitlab can totally do 
> > that.
> >  >>> Creating a PR would trigger the tests on all supported archs, 
> > and we
> >  >>> would immediately detect when something has gone wrong.
> >  >>>
> >  >>> Hopefully you will agree that it makes sense and is a step in 
> > the
> >  >>> right direction.
> >  >>>
> >  >>> Cheers,
> >  >>> -Paul
> >  >>>
> >  >>>
> >  >>>
> >  >>
> >  >
> >  >