[OpenLayers-Dev] Github or Trac?

[Eric Lemoine]

On Sunday, April 29, 2012, Christopher Schmidt wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Since the switch to Github, it appears that the OpenLayers project
> now uses two different mechanisms to manage incoming issues and
> tickets: Trac and Github issues.
>
> Right now, the project appears to have a number of pages directing
> new users to file tickets in trac, such as:
>
>  http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/FilingTickets
>  http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#SVN
>  http://trac.openlayers.org/ being linked as 'support and development'
>  from the homepage.
>
> It appears that new tickets are being created by users in trac at a
> rate of about 2 per week -- 20 issues created in the past 8 weeks, and
> 741 open tickets, 43 awaiting review.
>
> In github, there are 109 open issues. Approximately 10 new issues are
> being created per week (40 in the last 18 days). The only obvious
> reference to Github anywhere in the OpenLayers project is a single 'Fork
> us on GitHub' link. (There are a couple other links in the trac wiki,
> but they're hidden relatively well, compared to the 'how to file a bug',
> and don't make it clear that tickets should be filed on github.)
>
> It looks like the question of where tickets should be made has been
> asked before on the mailing list, with no answer:
>
>  http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-dev/2012-January/008345.html
>
> It was also informally discussed prior to that:
>  http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-dev/2011-October/008137.html
>
> but it isn't obvious that any decision was made from that discussion;
> I don't see any discussion of what actions would need to be taken
> in order to shift development to the Github issue tracker (like, for
> example, updating our webpage to direct people there instead of to trac
> when filing new issues).
>
> It seems that developers are now closing trac tickets as duplicates of
> unsolved Github issues:
>
>  https://github.com/openlayers/openlayers/issues/392
>  http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/ticket/3649
>
> In the past, I might have requested a vote, but it seems like a vote is
> really not even a plausible approach to the question at this point:
> what's done is done. If developers can confirm that OpenLayers is
> intending all future development to take place using the Github issue
> tracker, and that the trac issue tracker is now a dead end, then it
> would probably be best for new developers if a plan could be developed
> to help migrate the existing trac system into Github, starting with
> migrating links for development moving to Github instead of Trac as the
> recommended source.
>
> I look forward to any feedback from the active developers on how
> development is intended to work :)



Thanks for bringing this up Chris.

I'm in favour of using one issue tracker only, and I was planning to raise
the issue after 2.12 final is out.

I'd like to use GitHub only. In this way we can easily cross-refence
between issues, pull requests, commit messages, and review comments.
Tracking is so important!

I was a bit hesitant when I started the release process, because our
release procedure relied on ticket fields, such as “version”, that GitHub
does not offer. GitHub issues just have a “milestone” and “tags”.

Since then I've started rewriting the release procedure [*], and I now
think we can get by with what GitHub offers.

Cheers,

[*] <http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/Release/Procedure>


-- 
Eric Lemoine

Camptocamp France SAS
Savoie Technolac, BP 352
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Tel : 00 33 4 79 44 44 96
Mail : eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com
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