[Python-Dev] How is the GitHub workflow working for people?

[Nick Coghlan]

On 22 February 2018 at 08:19, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> As for the bug tracker, I still do like Roundup, and we have a huge investment in it, not just in resources expended to make it rock, but also in all the history in it and everything that integrates with it.  I wouldn’t stop anybody who’s motivated to spearhead a move to GH issues, but I also don’t think that can be taken up lightly.

There are also several additional challenges with migrating the issue
tracker that didn't impact the code migration (at least, not as
badly):

* Issue number preservation: because the previous issue tracker
migration was from SourceForge to self-hosted, the SourceForge issue
numbers could be injected directly into Roundup. As far as I know, we
wouldn't be able to do that for a migration into GitHub - all existing
issues would be arbitrarily renumbered. (The most viable solution to
this would probably be to continue running a redirector on
bugs.python.org that translated existing issue links to their GitHub
counterparts)
* External links to issues are far more common than external links
directly into source control, so a migration strategy for preserving
those would be highly desirable (the redirector above would also help
handle that)
* One of the requirements for the GitHub migration was to continue to
offer contribution workflows that don't require creation of an account
with a proprietary American service provider. That workflow is to post
a patch on Roundup and ask someone else to convert it into a GitHub
PR. As a result, migrating the issue tracker would also mean saying
we're dropping that workflow requirement, and deliberately excluding
everyone without a GitHub account entirely from the core development
process (they won't even be able to file issues any more).
* The Roundup tracker is the database-of-record for CLA signatures. We
don't have the ability to add arbitrary user metadata on GitHub, so if
the issue tracker migrates to GitHub, we'll need a different solution
for CLA tracking.
* Roundup's nosy list is integrated with the experts index in the
developer guide, so an equivalent for that would need to be worked out
for GitHub in order to help out triagers

Personally, the only things I really miss on Roundup vs GitHub issues
are usability tweaks like Markdown support in the comment editor, and
inline dropdowns for @-mentions of other users and #-mentions of other
issues, so if someone is motivated to work on issue tracking
enhancements, that seems like a more fruitful endeavour than trying to
migrate wholesale to a proprietary third party service.

Cheers,
Nick.

P.S. That said, one tracker that I think absolutely *would* be worth
migrating to GitHub is the meta-tracker at
http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/meta. We haven't customised
that instance the way we have bugs.python.org, and consolidating it
and the source repo at http://hg.python.org/tracker/roundup/ into a
single https://github.com/python/bugs.python.org repo would better
align tracker development with development on other parts of the
infrastructure.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia