On Mar 05, 2017, at 01:47 AM, Thomas Goirand wrote: >Why waiting? The freeze is typically a time of very low activity and low >disturbance. That's a perfect moment for doing the switch.
I think it's generally been the consensus, even outside of this team, that doing vcs or other disruptive switches are bad ideas during times of release freezes. For example, upstream CPython recently switched to git + github, but while an enormous amount of work went into making that as smooth as possible beforehand, the actual switch wasn't done until after the 3.6 release. There are lots of good reasons for that. I think most importantly is that if a last minute RC bug were to pop up, no one wants to have to figure out (or worse, debug) a new maintenance workflow in order to fix that critical problem. But that only gates flag day. Any switch of this nature requires a lot of work before flag day. Look at the switch from svn to git, Stefano did a huge amount of testing and development to get us to that point, with lots of test migrations, feedback, etc. Kudos to him for the tenacity and dedication to the team on that. >It took *years* to switch from SVN to Git. It's taking *years* to get >out of git-dpm. How many centuries until the team realize that others >are using CI/CD, automated testing, and such, and team member accept >things changing fast on the right direction? There's always resistance >for change in this team. Let's look at the switch from git-dpm as an example. We *know* there are challenges in that conversion; I've experimented with it as have others, and it's not a trivial operation. So we need one or a few dedicated people to investigate all the technical details of such a switch. What are the steps needed to convert an individual package? How and when will we convert all team packages? What exactly will the new workflow look like? Does the wiki page accurate describe all the common tasks that team members will need to perform? Is there a test conversion that people can try out? Where are the scripts to do the conversion so others can contribute? What is the process for providing and addressing feedback as people test it? What's the timeline, and when is flag day? I think one of the problems specifically with getting rid of git-dpm is that, while the tool is deprecated and there are known problems, it actually kind of works pretty well for us. svn clearly was breaking down, but from a global team point of view, git-dpm is still almost good enough, so the urgency to switch hasn't been there. Still, I think there's consensus that we need to be using supported tools, and git-dpm does occasionally rear up and bite your head off. But we need volunteers to say "I am going to do the hard work to make the conversion happen". And of course we're all busy, and it's a thankless job (but thank you Stefano for your previous work!). So that's why, IMHO, the git-dpm conversion hasn't happened yet. If we're just not going to find the round tuits to do the conversion before then, this would make for a very suitable collaboration for a team Debconf sprint. CI/CD, automated testing, etc. cannot just happen by fiat. They may be great ideas we can adopt, but *a lot* of hard work and dedicated time goes into making sure the technology can handle things, but also, and more importantly IMHO to make sure that everyone on the team knows how it works, understands and can help debug any problems, knows where the well-written documentation is, etc. We need dedicated people to help people on IRC and email when they get stuck or have a problem. And we have to consider the needs of those for whom contribution to DPMT is not a full-time job. Yes, there is always a natural resistance to change. But that can be greatly alleviated by preparation and dedication. Those things take serious amounts of time and fortitude. It's hard to devote that time when you Just Want To Get Something Done and have to squeeze in an hour here and there to do it. I look at folks like Brett Cannon doing the CPython GitHub transition as a model for this. I'm truly impressed at the work he's done (with lots of help from others), and at the enormous positive outcome of the effort. But also keep in mind that flag day isn't the end of the process. Things are still getting tweaked to help smooth the post-migration pain points. Now, maybe DPMT won't be as complicated, but it still requires dedication and follow through. And faith! You have to believe (and be convincing and convincingly friendly in the face of all that inertia) that what you are proposing will help make everyone's life easier, will make the process of contributions more efficient for daily maintainers and occasional maintainers alike. Cheers, -Barry
