[Scons-dev] Atlassian, BitBucket, Mercurial

[Bill Deegan]

My 2 Cents.

(seems this sat in my drafts folder since september of 2015.. oops)

1) I don't like mercurial.  Git has a better flow for dealing with open
source projects in my opinion. Having worked (and contributed code to) both
buildbot and plone I can say with confidence that the create a branch for
every bug/feature/project, create pull request, and when the pull request
is merged the branch doesn't get carried into the master repo.  Yeah
there's bookmarks, I don't get them, I don't want to learn them (it's
throwaway brain capacity for me as I only use mercurial for SCons).  I'm
not religious when it comes to the languages tools are written in, only
that they make it easy to get the work done, and have decent user/developer
communities so if we run into issues we can have confidence that we can get
them resolved in a reasonable time frame.

2) While I agree with Dirk that its good to be in a place where we can just
code, and I think we're there now, I don't think that the transition to git
has to be that disruptive.  I don't see any reason we'd NEED to change
anything but the repo type.  Changing Wiki, bugtracking, etc are not (IMHO)
required to be changed when we change repo types.

3) Roundup, I need to apologize to Dirk as I've yet to put up an instance
on my colo machine (which also runs SCons' buildbot master)

4) Yes Dirk is a core contributor/developer/StackOverFlowAnswerGod, just in
case we've not acknowledged it elsewhere!

-Bill

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Dirk Bächle <tshortik at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi again,
>
> On 23.09.2015 13:45, Russel Winder wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2015-09-23 at 07:08 -0400, Gary Oberbrunner wrote:
>>
>>> Could be; pretty much _every_ project I can think of is using git
>>> now.  I
>>> have to twist my brain around every time I work on SCons. :-)
>>>
>>
>>
> here are my 2cents regarding changing our VCS or project hosting:
>
> Let's. Not. Switch.
>
> You ask why? Because I'm happy. I'm so happy that---after a seemingly
> never-ending series of events, with project managers leaving, switching
> from SVN to hg, migrating our Wiki to Bitbucket, and so on---we've finally
> reached a state where I can do what I like most: coding.
>
> It's tempting to think: yeah, let's just import the current repo into git,
> push it to Github, and we're good to go again. But I count myself to be a
> member of the core developer team. So, in the case of switching to another
> VCS I'd feel obliged to work on setting up and properly documenting the new
> workflows in the Wiki. I'd also feel obliged to answer questions from
> newcomers, or people getting confused over the VCS change.
> Which is both fine per se, but it would keep me from doing what I like
> most (and am good at, to a certain extent): coding.
>
> But anybody out there has a good chance of convincing me that switching is
> good for the project overall, by (a priori to the actual switch) either:
>
>   - providing a full replacement for the current descriptions of our
> general development workflow, and about howto creating pull requests in
> particular, for our Wiki and volunteering to answer all upcoming questions
> about it, or
>   - jumping on a large bug or issue (like the python3 branch, for
> example), setting up his preferred git-hg bridge, working on stuff, and
> wowing me and everybody else with the way he makes impressive progress in a
> very short time. ;)
>
> Which is sad because Git still has so much wrong with it, and Mercurial
>> has so much going for it. However, the social and commercial pressure
>> seems inexorable that Git shall be the monopoly.
>>
>>
> I don't feel any pressure in this direction. (see also below)
>
> I think there possible needs to be a new debate about whether to switch
>> to Git and GitHub.
>>
>
> I don't think so.
>
> When the decision was made to move from Subversion
>
>> on Tigris to Mercurial on BitBucket, I had some issues/doubts, but the
>> final decision seemed fine and not a problem. However time has moved on
>> and we are are now in an era where to get any traction as a FOSS
>> project you appear to have to use GitHub.
>>
>>
> Can you elaborate a bit on this conclusion? I fail to see the connection
> between "Project is at Github" and "Project is successful" as a direct
> consequence. How exactly do you get from one to the other?
> Isn't it more the fact that, since a lot of projects are at Github (for
> whatever reasons), there's a high probability that a successful project is
> at Github? Have you checked for the opposite side of the scale? My bet
> would be that the worst doing projects are at Github too...because almost
> everybody is there!
>
> I always thought that to get any traction and have success, you need to
> have a good product/project. Why don't we continue working on that in the
> first place?
> We have a full roadmap and TODO list, and last time I checked there were
> 1500+ unresolved issues in our Tigris tracker. ;)
>
> OK, I realize it is all "kool kids", "hipsters", and "people who say
>> awesome evey sentence", but the issue is not one of what is best as a
>> technology, it is what is best as a way of gaining traction.
>>
>
> See above for my notion of "traction". ;)
>
> I
>
>> appreciate Mercurial is written in Python (mostly) and Python users
>> Mercurial, but they have PSF. SCons is just another ancient build
>> system trying to exist as a FOSS project.
>>
>>
> This feels to me like we should accept getting dictated "from the outside"
> what to use in our project. I think that SCons as a (Python!) project has a
> good standing and can afford to "flex its muscles" when needed. You say
> that Mercurial gets left by many projects, and we should do the same? Then
> who's going to stay and ensure that Mercurial doesn't die (sorry, couldn't
> think of a less dramatic word right now)? Isn't this exactly our job, as
> part of the Python community?
>
> I propose therefore that we switch from Mercurial/BitBucket to
>> Git/GitHub and that we start a new GitHub issue tracker (even though it
>> is shite really). Issues from Tigris can be moved over by hand as
>> needed.
>>
>
> I don't migrate 3000+ issues by hand. Funny thing is, only yesterday I
> continued working on my converter script for importing all Tigris bugs into
> a Roundup tracker instance. There are just a few minor unresolved problems
> with it, so if you think a different bug tracker "cuts the mustard", please
> join and help me with it.
>
> This then gives access to Travis, CodeShip, etc. The point here
>
>> is not that they are reliable CIs, it is that they are ways of
>> promoting and marketing the project in the Git-sphere.
>>
>> Given Buck, Bazel,… SCons needs to do something to make a new presence
>> or simply drift into the dustbin of history.
>>
>>
> This is the first time ever that I hear about Buck and Bazel...which
> proves to me that being at Github is no guarantee to getting noticed as a
> software project.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dirk
>
>
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