Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Future of rdiff-backup: Python 3 migration and project maintainership in general

[Bill Harris]

As for an indicator of the popularity of rdiff-backup, does
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=rdiff-backup help?

I don't know how this compares to other packages, especially other backup
packages, I don't know how many Debian users use popcon, and I don't even
know the popularity of Debian compared to other distros (is this popcon
database limited to Debian?).  I'm guessing I first started using
rdiff-backup in the 2006-2008-ish time frame.

Thanks to those of you who have expressed interest in reinvigorating this
tool.

Bill

On Sat, Jul 27, 2019 at 6:57 AM Tobias Leupold <address@hidden>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been an rdiff-backup user for years now (I'm not so fit with Python,
> so I
> think this project is a bit above my skills when it comes to development
> ...),
> and I also use it in a productive enviroment. I really like it. It's
> exactly
> what I need. And I would really appreciate it not to be abandoned.
>
> It's very nice that apparently, some guys out there want to bring it back
> to
> life. Some years ago, Gentoo marked rdiff-backup for removal, but gladly,
> at
> least some development was done by some folks so that they finally kept it.
>
> Please do it! Please arrange on what fork and which commits to use, merge
> it
> into some reasonable code base and start over. What Eric wrote sounded
> reasonable tome. Additionally I I think a full-time Debian developer who
> wants
> to adopt rdiff-backup can't be the worst case, can it?! ;-)
>
> Thanks for putting effort in this nice project and make it going on!
>
> Cheers, Tobias
>
> Am Samstag, 27. Juli 2019, 08:37:15 CEST schrieb Eric L.:
> > Hello again (in the morning for me),
> >
> > in more length and with a fresh mind, and after having gone through all
> > thread answers, let me give a lengthy position:
> >
> > 0. I'm the EricZolf referenced elsewhere, who has a branch finished for
> > Linux with the migration to Python 3. I'll post a note after this e-mail
> > into the PR 40 to prove it.
> >
> > 1. it's great to see that there is still a community of users, I didn't
> > realise, else I'd have communicated earlier. I'm now on the mailing list
> > so all is good.
> >
> > 2. I started the migration effort because I didn't want to lose my
> > backup tool once Python 2 is out of support, else I'm an IT guy with
> > quite a lot of Ansible background (Python!), one wife, 2 children, a
> > consulting job and little time, but making the best out of it.
> >
> > 3. Initially, I didn't want to create my own definitive fork but wanted
> > to give sol1 a chance to become active and take their job as maintainer
> > seriously. As Otto noticed, I wasn't very successful till now. I would
> > have given them the Summer to react and then I'd have gone my own way,
> > without a clear idea how to create a community.
> >
> > 4. Knowing now that there is still such a community alive (thanks to
> > Otto!), I'd suggest following approach:
> >
> > a. I'll ping a last time sol1 and ask for their position.
> > b. In the meantime, review my PR, it's huge, no chance to merge anything
> > else before it's merged back into master.
> > c. I merge back into my master based on your feedback.
> > d. A last task is required before others can start and I would ask your
> > patience a last time: I want the whole code to be PEP8 conform before
> > others contribute to it, and I think (but open to discussion) that it's
> > best done if one person does it in one go.
> > e. Once this is done, I would second Patrick's suggestion and create an
> > rdiff-backup project, open it to the community and push my repository to
> > there for further common work (I wouldn't like to lose my repository
> > because I have 30+ issues I've created as I went through the code).
> >
> > A few more side notes:
> >
> > A. my PR isn't tested against Windows and Mac, feel free to test and
> > push fix PR against my branch on my repo and I'll merge (it should work,
> > never tried, else I'll merge manually). Please focus on regression bugs
> > that we get quickly this huge branch merged.
> > B. I'm fully with Patrick regarding CI/CD, if you know tox, you'll see
> > that I have a good start and one of my next moves would probably have
> > been to integrate tox with GitHub's pipeline.
> > C. This and anything else like web page, a mailing list we own, release
> > process, and pending issues, we can discuss together once we've agreed
> > on the big plan.
> >
> > Let the discussion roll, happy to be here, happy to hear there are
> > others who care about rdiff-backup, thanks to Otto for kicking this!
> > Eric
>
>
>
>
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