Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

sm-discuss - [SM-Discuss] Github as primary source repository for SourceMage?

sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Public SourceMage Discussion List

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: David Kowis <dkowis AT shlrm.org>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Discuss] Github as primary source repository for SourceMage?
  • Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:20:52 -0500

Given a recent revival of interest in SourceMage, I brought up on IRC
that we could move our primary repositories, wiki, and issue tracking to
Github.

No decisions have been made at this point. Self-hosting is ancillary,
cutting down on server costs would be a good thing.

Github allows open source hosting of up to 1GB in repo size. Our
grimoire size is only 280MB, so we're good there for quite a while. I've
already created the sourcemage[0] organization there, so we have a
single hat to group any number of repos under.

It has been brought up that Github isn't OSS, and that we could be
locked into a vendor. My opinion in the matter is that Github is just
fluff on top of Git that makes it easy to view things and easier to
perform some actions.

The underlying repository is git, and nothing but git, via ssh or https,
the hooks are all achievable via regular scripted hooks if we wanted to
do that. The Wiki technology is actually open source, based on Jekyll.
The only non-open source bits are the webUI.

As an example, Open Source alternatives include Gitlab or gitorious.

The way I see it there are advantages to being on Github:
* Github is arguably the go-to place for Open Source software
* Pull requests are stupid easy
* Pull requests for our wiki will be stupid easy (also no spam!)
* Issue tracking is robust and capable without being overcomplicated
* It's still git, with all the power git has
* Basically infinite bandwidth
* Probably better uptime
* Something we can just use, without having to maintain

There are also a few disadvantages:
* It's a vendor, we're subject to their whims
* Github itself is not open source
* Not directly under our control
* Customization is a bit more difficult (although there are web hooks)[1]

IIRC in the past we had something like this happen, we bailed from
perforce for two reasons:
1. It was under someone's desk at their office, and so when it went
down, it was hard down for quite a while
2. Perforce was not Open Source (but it was free for open source to use)

Personally, I don't feel that using Github would lock us into any vendor
specific things. As things stand right now, we can very easily take our
repo and walk, going to *anything* else. The only "proprietary" bits
would be the issue tracking, and there is currently an API to access
that data, so we could export that and walk away also.

I'm sure you all have opinions on this, and since we haven't had any
elections in forever (like two years?) and at least one person has
expressed that "PL can't just do this, we need to have a vote" I'm not
exactly sure how I can proceed without pissing anyone off heh.

Technically the people who want to do good work could fork the heck out
of SourceMage and start doing all this right now anyway under another
name, and we can do something else. I'm not sure exactly how much power
I have as PL, I don't wish to abuse it, but I'm also not willing to let
us languish in limbo, unable to form a consensus.

If we make Github our primary repo location, do we damn our future
selves into vendor lock-in? Are we going against the principles of Open
Source by using something that isn't Open Source? Are the benefits of
being on Github worth the consequences? Are the benefits of being on
Github benefits we even want?

--
David Kowis

[0]: https://github.com/sourcemage
[1]: https://developer.github.com/webhooks/

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page