On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Frédéric Chapoton <fchapot...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear sage developers and maintainers, > > Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the > necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
it is a disaster that new people can't come aboard easily. It really is urgent. A convoluted system to get new developers onboard and contributing is a very bad omen for open-source projects, it really is. E.g. try to contribute to something like OpenBSD - I'd sure most potentail contributors run away screaming, upon learning that they must use CVS and e-mail patches around for approval. > > * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under > investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be > do-able and could save us 3 $ per day. but this is far from free, still, and hosting prices are to go with the energy prices, up and up. It's really spending money on a questionable luxury, instead of something useful. > * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope to > fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to some > of us. > > My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is > serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and > temporary reasons. the reasons are not supreficial, in particular, trac+gitolite software is obsolete. I cannot imagine a new project that would choose it as a platform. > > The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac software > itself. > > In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see trac > heberged by some university. There are already several services in France, so > another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step forward. > > About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available > on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the > situation will be stable. Why do you think so? The bus factors of trac and gitolite software are very, very small. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor) As well as the bus factor for our trac instance. > > As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of > open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large > private companies. Let's not get into this argument. I don't see how paying Google's adware criminals US$4000 per year is more ethical than moving over to GitHub (which, by the way, gives us a bit of money, via GitHub sponsors system :-)). Besides, moving from GitHub to GitLab is rather easy, compared to move from trac to Git**b. Dima > > Frédéric > > > Le ven. 9 sept. 2022 à 11:55, Dima Pasechnik <dimp...@gmail.com> a écrit : >> >> ---------- Forwarded message --------- >> From: Dima Pasechnik <dimp...@gmail.com> >> Date: Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 10:54 AM >> Subject: Re: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? >> [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac >> To: sage-devel <sage-devel@googlegroups.com> >> >> >> I am resurrecting this thread, as in addition of trac continuing to >> eat up funds (at a rate of over US$ 10 per day at the moment), it has >> gotten increasingly broken. In particular, in the last 2 weeks no new >> developers can really join the project, as there is no normal* way to >> add new ssh keys into trac accounts, and it's not possible to >> push/pull with "new" github ssh keys, i.e. keys that were not already >> "known" to trac, i.e. added to the trac store of ssh keys before the >> last breakage happened. >> >> As far as funding is concerned, attempts to bring trac to a "free" >> hosting stalled (see earlier messages in this thread). >> >> A further longer term issue is that trac software is basically on life >> support, and it's only matter of time it will become totally obsolete. >> >> Such a move will allow a considerable simplification of our devops, >> and free up quite a bit of developer time >> to do interesting work rather than messing around with semi-obsolete >> stuff such as trac, gitolite, etc. >> >> Importantly, Volker, the release manager, is willing to proceed with the >> move. >> >> Also, various Sage upstream (and downstream) projects have moved away >> from trac to github, e.g. Cython, or away from another system to >> github, e.g. CPython, GAP, jupyter, etc... >> >> There is a trac ticket to manage the proposed move, >> https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/30363 tentatively set for Sage 9.8. >> >> I've conducted few experiments with a tool to import trac sites to >> github: https://github.com/svigerske/trac-to-github, which in >> particular allows to import trac tickets as github issues; a result of >> running it on few tickets >> may be inspected here: >> https://github.com/dimpase/trac_to_gh/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed >> (Here issues 1-10 correspond to trac tickets one to one :-)) >> Further work on trac-to-github will be needed, in particular to >> properly link branches in our git tree, but it's doable, >> and we have volunteers to do it. >> >> We'd like to hear about serious objections to the move, if any. >> >> >> >> *) normal - i.e. using trac interface; we (probably) still have a way >> to modify the repository of ssh keys used by trac manually. >> >> On Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 10:53:54 AM UTC Frédéric Chapoton wrote: >> > >> > Erik, did you stop the Orsay runners for gitlab ? It seems that the docker >> > build there for 9.3.b9 is stuck by lack of runners. >> > >> > https://gitlab.com/sagemath/sage/-/pipelines >> > >> > Frédéric >> > >> > Le jeudi 11 mars 2021 à 13:25:52 UTC+1, erik....@gmail.com a écrit : >> >> >> >> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 1:20 PM E. Madison Bray <erik....@gmail.com> >> >> wrote: >> >> > >> >> > On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 12:52 PM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> >> >> > wrote: >> >> > > >> >> > > On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:11 AM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> >> >> > > wrote: >> >> > > > >> >> > > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 4:00 PM E. Madison Bray >> >> > > > <erik....@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > > > > >> >> > > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 11:33 PM tobia...@gmx.de >> >> > > > > <tobia...@gmx.de> wrote: >> >> > > > > > >> >> > > > > > >> >> > > > > > For what's worth, + 1 for migrating to github. >> >> > > > > > >> >> > > > > > The interface is cleaner, it has many more features and >> >> > > > > > integrations, and is more active which could attract more >> >> > > > > > contributions. There are a few scripts/tools that allow to >> >> > > > > > migrate from trac to github. But most of them are unmaintained >> >> > > > > > for a few years already, so I'm not sure if they still work >> >> > > > > > (which should be taken as a sign that one should migrate sooner >> >> > > > > > than later). >> >> > > > > >> >> > > > > In 2019 Julian Rüth and I, with the help of some others, already >> >> > > > > put >> >> > > > > in some effort to set up an organization for SageMath on GitLab: >> >> > > > > https://gitlab.com/sagemath >> >> > > > > >> >> > > > > Between GitHub and GitLab, we felt that the latter would be more >> >> > > > > acceptable to the broader Sage community. We also implemented a >> >> > > > > bot >> >> > > > > that can mirror GitLab merge requests as Trac tickets, though it's >> >> > > > > been in need of troubleshooting for a while. >> >> > > > > >> >> > > > > This was also done before the advent of GitHub Actions, and the >> >> > > > > ability to provide custom CI runners for GitLab Pipelines seemed >> >> > > > > advantageous, since we could maintain our own fleet of runners, >> >> > > > > be it >> >> > > > > on Sage developers' personal machines (if they are generous >> >> > > > > enough to >> >> > > > > host them) or any conceivable constellation of cloud computing >> >> > > > > platforms. >> >> > > > > >> >> > > > > In practice this has gained little traction, in part due to lack >> >> > > > > of >> >> > > > > advertising. The GitLab Runner solution also proved a bit >> >> > > > > troublesome >> >> > > > > to maintain, as it required some constant attention to make sure >> >> > > > > there >> >> > > > > were always working runners available. I tried to keep that up >> >> > > > > for a >> >> > > > > while myself, but have had other obligations. >> >> > > > >> >> > > > I think it should be mentioned that GitLab has an analog of GitHub >> >> > > > Actions, >> >> > > > and the difference is that its runners may be self-hosted, or >> >> > > > provided >> >> > > > by GitLab. >> >> > > > E.g. see https://gitlab.com/sagemath/dev/trac/-/pipelines/266731297 >> >> > > >> >> > > I just tried to switch to a "community" runner, and got an error which >> >> > > is probably >> >> > > obvious to people versed in Docker: >> >> > > >> >> > > https://gitlab.com/sagemath/dev/trac/-/jobs/1089520433 >> >> > >> >> > I think it might be because the Docker builds have been otherwise not >> >> > working for a while (due to lack of reliable runners). So a more >> >> > recent "build-from-clean" job is needed. These jobs are run when >> >> > develop/master are updated as well as on tags. Whereas >> >> > "built-from-latest" is run on branches for tickets. It tries to build >> >> > the branch on top of the "latest" Docker image e.g. for develop. But >> >> > the last one that built successfully is too old, and so trying to make >> >> > the diff between that ticket and the version of develop it's based on >> >> > fails. Hence the message: >> >> > >> >> > "Could not find commit fbca269f627bf6a8bc6f0a611ed7e26260ebc994 in >> >> > your local Git history. Please merge in the latest built develop >> >> > branch to fix this: git fetch trac && git merge >> >> > fbca269f627bf6a8bc6f0a611ed7e26260ebc994" >> >> > >> >> > But for the automated CI that's not a very useful message... >> >> > >> >> > I know Matthias has done some impressive things to get around GitHub >> >> > Actions' time limit on jobs by breaking the build up into "stages" >> >> > that can be split across multiple jobs. I see no reason that couldn't >> >> > work with GitLab as well. >> >> > >> >> > But it would still be better to have our own fleet of runners--they >> >> > would be faster, and we could test on more different custom hardware >> >> > configurations. The problem is that this is at a minimum a part-time >> >> > job... >> >> >> >> Well looks like I need to correct the record a bit. Perhaps I've been >> >> a bit too sanguine about the state of the GitLab builds. In fact, the >> >> latest develop commit, 9.3beta8, built quite successfully: >> >> https://gitlab.com/sagemath/sage/-/pipelines/266734885 >> >> >> >> And it ran on one of the fleet of runners I've been maintaining here >> >> at Paris-Saclay, which I haven't touched in months. So I guess it's >> >> still working after all ^^; Ever since I set this up I had been >> >> having a problem with runners randomly erroring out, and not being >> >> deleted correctly when they do. I have tried many times to fix it to >> >> no avail, and I kind of gave up for a while. I assumed eventually >> >> this caused things to grind to a halt, but apparently not. >> >> >> >> Knowing that it's still working at least somewhat gives me motivation >> >> to try again to investigate the problem with the erroring runners and >> >> see if it can't be fixed. Maybe an upgrade of the gitlab-runner >> >> controller is in order... >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "sage-devel" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/142912ca-a226-47a7-8ea4-6afe5711376fn%40googlegroups.com. >> >> -- >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "sagemath-admins" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to sagemath-admins+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sagemath-admins/CAAWYfq2mC7yHKP%2B%3DGzvdAo0BrYiv-CMJ3r2xbMfBA-_8Jr-k8Q%40mail.gmail.com. > > -- > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sagemath-admins" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sagemath-admins+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sagemath-admins/CAL7VZwDQoUVKLrHazy2-%2BzW6LfdJ-zSavzgeBqU4F%3Db59Ub9vQ%40mail.gmail.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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