Re: Migrating to the gitlab issue tracker

[John Snow]

On 10/29/20 3:55 PM, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 29/10/2020 18.12, John Snow wrote:
> > On 10/29/20 12:49 PM, Alistair Francis wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 9:41 AM Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 29 Oct 2020 12:01:27 -0400
> > > > John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > If you're in the CC list, it's because you are listed in MAINTAINERS.
> > > >
> > > > <cleared the cc: list except for qemu-devel :)>
> > > >
> > > > > Paolo's QEMU keynote this morning mentioned the possible use of the
> > > > > Gitlab issue tracker instead of using Launchpad.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm quite fond of the gitlab issue tracker, I think it works quite well
> > > > > and it has pretty good and uncomplicated API access to it in order to
> > > > > customize your workflow if you'd really like to.
> > > > >
> > > > > In experimenting with my mirror on gitlab though, I was unable to find a
> > > > > way to configure it to send issue tracker notifications to the email
> > > > > list. A move to gitlab would likely mean, then:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1. The cessation of (automatic) issue tracker mails to the list
> > > > > 2. The loss of the ability to update the issue tracker by replying to
> > > > > said emails
> > > > > 3. Anyone listed in MAINTAINERS would be expected to have a gitlab
> > > > > account in order to interact with the issue tracker.
> > > >
> > > > The gitlab issue tracker is almost certainly is an improvement over
> > > > launchpad (and I do have a gitlab account); but not being able to
> > > > interact via email is at least annoying. I expect that not only
> > > > maintainers will want to interact with bug reports?
> > > >
> > > > > However, once you have a gitlab account, you DO gain the ability to
> > > > > receive emails for issues; possibly only those tagged with labels that
> > > > > you cared about -- giving a nice filtering mechanism to receive only
> > > > > bugs you care about.
> > > > >
> > > > > Gitlab also does support individual accounts updating issues using a
> > > > > generated personalized email address, so if the email workflow is
> > > > > crucial to you, it is still available.
> > > >
> > > > You mean that I can update via email, provided it's an address
> > > > associated with my account?
> > > >
> > > > > I'm for it, or at least for beginning a pilot program where we
> > > > > experiment with the idea for interested parties. I wanted to send up a
> > > > > trial balloon to see how we were feeling about this.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure if you want Acks, but it sounds good to me.
> > >
> > > Alistair
> >
> > Mostly I was looking for any hard objections over the idea of issues not
> > necessarily being sent to the list anymore, if there were any.
> >
> > I want to hear from Thomas Huth too, but maybe we can work out a pilot
> > migration and give it a test-run and find more concrete objections that way.
>
> I'd certainly give it a try! Launchpad is IMHO really a pain (let me know if
> I should elaborate on that topic again...), and the email bridge is often
> also not working correctly (replies to bug mails sometimes get put into the
> bug tracker, sometimes not), so this is not something I would really miss
> when we quite Launchpad.
>
> So could somebody please enable the issue tracker there, so we can give it a
> try? Phil? Alex? Stefan? ...?
>
> If it works well, I can certainly help to get the links etc. in our website
> fixed.

Great! You are the primary bug wrangler, so if you are interested in 
trialing it, I am interested in helping!

If we enable the bug tracker, can we please add Thomas and myself as 
'Reporter' level contributors to QEMU so we can wrangle bugs?

Info on permissions: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/permissions.html

There's also an old bug (2 years) about migrating Launchpad to Gitlab, 
but there's been no movement.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/22600

If we like the results of the trial, we'll need a convincing migration 
strategy.