Hi Ciro, First of all, we appreciate your efforts to further document gem5 and answer questions on the gem5 users list!
Right now, we're really just using github as a backup mirror of gem5. I'm not sure why this was started initially, TBH. It doesn't seem necessary now that we are hosting the code on Google's cloud. I really don't like the idea of having a fragmented infrastructure. It would be best if everything gem5 was in the same place. As far as an issue tracker goes... the main problem is that we don't have anyone to actually *solve* any issues/bugs that people find. Almost all of our contributors are working full time in research positions or as grad students and cannot be expected to fix bugs unrelated to their research directions. What I believe happened with the Flyspray (and what I would expect to happen with any issue tracker) is that a huge number of issues built up over time. Eventually, it became useless as a place for documenting issues because no one tracked how commits effected the issues reported. The reasons I don't want an issue tracker aren't because of problems with how it would work, how emails would be sent, spam, etc. It's much more the question "how will it help the community?" and "will the benefits out weight the costs?" In this case, costs include time to manage, but also confusion for new community members on how to communicate with the rest of the community. What I believe we need is more infrastructure for gem5. We need people who can manage an issue tracker, fix bugs, implement shared features, and keep the general infrastructure up to date. To do this (again, IMO) we need to two things: 1) money to pay someone to do this, and 2) someone willing to coordinate/manage everything. This discussion is related to the problems on gem5.org as well. We've been trying to move as much of the infrastructure as possible to the cloud because it's hard to find community members with the time/know how to manage everything internally. For instance, it seems like it would be good to get OpenGrok back up, but I don't even know who set it up! It was probably one of Steve's students who long ago moved on to other things. Even getting rid of the link is hard... I don't know who has access to change that page (I don't). gem5 is a weird project. I really haven't seen anything like it. Most of the contributors are only around for a few years while they are getting their PhD then they leave. This churn in contributors is clearly makes some project management activities very hard. Sorry for the long message. I wanted to give you (and everyone else reading) a little bit of context and history. I (we) are very open to new contributors and people helping out with the project. If you have ideas on how to make things better we're listening! Although I argued against using an issue tracker, I'm open to the idea if I'm convinced that it will help the community. Thanks again for all of your contributions so far! I look forward to working with you! Cheers, Jason ----------- Jason Lowe-Power Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department University of California, Davis 3049 Kemper Hall [email protected] On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 5:41 AM Ciro Santilli <[email protected]> wrote: > If made collaborator, I commit to keep every spam out. But there is > little to no spam on GitHub by default anyways. > > I feel that if users want to use GitHub issues, which seems to be the > case, we should cater for their preferred communication mechanism. > > Issue trackers have several advantages, notably: > > - open close status immediately visible, which I intend to maintain on > a best effort basis. But it is better than the mailing list, where you > have to browse N emails before finding out. > - you can opt in for notifications only from certain threads > - you can reply to messages even though you weren't subscribed when > they were made: > > https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/23197/reply-to-mailman-archived-message > Notably, if new maintainers come along, they can't mention that some > old bug was closed. > - tagging, specially for archs > - neater markdown formatting > > We don't need to make it an official mechanism, but I'd rather let > people use their preferred method. > > Also anyone easily subscribe and unsubscribed to receive an email > whenever a new issue is created, much like the mailing list. > > On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 1:29 PM, Andreas Sandberg > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Everyone, > > > > I think the first thing we need to establish is whether we want to use > > GitHub for issue tracking in the first place. The issue tracker there > > was left enabled by accident. > > > > As some of you may recall, we used to run a Flyspray-based issue tracker > > a long time ago. If memory serves me right, we ended up shutting down > > the tracker since it was mainly used for spam and none of the devs was > > using it. > > > > Cheers, > > Andreas > > > > > > > > On 07/04/2018 21:20, Ciro Santilli wrote: > >> > >> Can I be made a collaborator on GitHub https://github.com/gem5/gem5 to > >> help > >> manage the issues there? > >> > >> This is my account: https://github.com/cirosantilli-work > >> > >> I want this permission to be able to: > >> > >> - close resolved issues > >> - tag issues appropriately, specially by architecture when appropriate > >> - fix formatting problems > >> > >> and I will not use it for anything else. > >> > >> I have been supporting users often on the mailing list / GitHub / Stack > >> Overflow over the last month, and Andreas can also serve as my > reference. > >> _______________________________________________ > >> gem5-dev mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/gem5-dev > > > > > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy > the > > information in any medium. Thank you. > _______________________________________________ > gem5-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/gem5-dev _______________________________________________ gem5-dev mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/gem5-dev
