Re: Gitlab Migration

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 31.08.2021 19:03, João Távora wrote:
> I want to offer a small amount of anecdotal evidence in favor of the
> recent push to Sourcehut and against the GitLab/GitHub alternatives
> that are presumably favoured by you (Dmitry) and some others.

FWIW, I'm really more interested in UI changes than workflow changes (my 
email mentioned both). A move that will at least bring us a functioning 
bug tracker is a plus in my book.

> In recent
> $DAYJOBs I worked with these two GL/GH platforms fully, using them
> liberally and without restrictions. In these recent experiences the undeniable
> contemporarity and newcomer friendliness of these platforms does NOT
> seem to translate into quality of code, quality of discussion or any
> kind of benefic developer agility in any way.

That's an odd statement. First of all, why would quality of code change? 
Whatever linters you institute to run on a CI, can run locally as well. 
Quality of discussions is also on you.

gitlab/github/gogs/etc give you tools to make code reviews easier, and 
an opportunity to attract many new contributors, but then it's on you to 
make them feel welcome, so that they stay around.

Better "quality of code" can result from attracting strong new 
contributors, and looking at how, for example, bug#47711 ended up (a 
smart, prolific developer who has authored a number of popular 
third-party packages in the same area has now sworn off contributing to 
Emacs), or the atmosphere around Eglot, I find it hard to trust your 
experience here.

> Again, just anecdotal
> evidence which you may take for what it's worth, but in fact I believe
> that the "slow", unfamiliar, peculiar, old-school whatever-you-want-to-call-them
> methods used in Emacs development may in fact be "aces up our
> sleeve", not just a means to appease those that have been using them
> for a number of years.

Sure, let's keep the barriers to contribution, both formal and informal 
ones. That will serve us well.