Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 4:06 PM John Cremona  wrote:
>
> To me, as a contributor of code to Sage who has not contributed at all
> to the backend support, it seems that there is a clear majority in
> favour of moving to github.  As an ordinary developer I would be very
> happy with that.
>
> It looks to me as if Frédéric's main issue with github is his final
> point "...We should rather not bow under the power of large
> private companies.".

my reply to Frederic got posted ahead of his post, as he didn't cc to
sage-devel.
I wrote there that I don't see how to consolidate the latter wish with
us currently paying a huge private
corporation, and a rather evil one, a figure of about US$4000 p.a . for hosting.


>  I don't know enough about gitlab to know if it
> is a sensible alternative, but I myself have no problem with using
> github for this, as I do for just about everything else.
>
> John
>
> On Fri, 9 Sept 2022 at 15:10, Thierry  wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > let me forward the email of Frédéric as a whole, so that the thread remains
> > complete.
> >
> > - Forwarded message from Frédéric Chapoton  -
> >
> > Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2022 12:15:25 +0200
> > From: Frédéric Chapoton
> > To: sagemath-adm...@googlegroups.com
> > Subject: Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration
> > to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac
> >
> > Dear sage developers and maintainers,
> >
> > Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the
> > necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
> >
> > * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under
> > investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be
> > do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
> > * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope
> > to fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to
> > some of us.
> >
> > My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is
> > serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and
> > temporary reasons.
> >
> > The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac
> > software itself.
> >
> > In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see
> > trac heberged by some university. There are already several services in
> > France, so another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step
> > forward.
> >
> > About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available
> > on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the
> > situation will be stable.
> >
> > As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of
> > open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large
> > private companies.
> >
> > Frédéric
> >
> > -
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 12:15:13PM +0100, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Frédéric Chapoton  
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Dear sage developers and maintainers,
> > > >
> > > > Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on 
> > > > the necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
> > >
> > > it is a disaster that new people can't come aboard easily. It really is 
> > > urgent.
> > > A convoluted system to get new developers onboard and contributing is
> > > a very bad omen for open-source projects, it really is.
> > >
> > > E.g. try to contribute to something like OpenBSD - I'd sure most
> > > potentail contributors  run away screaming,
> > > upon learning that they must use CVS and e-mail patches around for 
> > > approval.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under 
> > > > investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should 
> > > > be do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
> > >
> > > but this is far from free, still, and hosting prices are to go with
> > > the energy prices, up and up.
> > > It's really spending money on a questionable luxury, instead of
> > > something useful.
> > >
> > > > * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is 
> > > > hope to fix that and in the mean-time one cou

Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[John Cremona]

To me, as a contributor of code to Sage who has not contributed at all
to the backend support, it seems that there is a clear majority in
favour of moving to github.  As an ordinary developer I would be very
happy with that.

It looks to me as if Frédéric's main issue with github is his final
point "...We should rather not bow under the power of large
private companies.".  I don't know enough about gitlab to know if it
is a sensible alternative, but I myself have no problem with using
github for this, as I do for just about everything else.

John

On Fri, 9 Sept 2022 at 15:10, Thierry  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> let me forward the email of Frédéric as a whole, so that the thread remains
> complete.
>
> - Forwarded message from Frédéric Chapoton  -
>
> Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2022 12:15:25 +0200
> From: Frédéric Chapoton
> To: sagemath-adm...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration
> to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac
>
> Dear sage developers and maintainers,
>
> Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the
> necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
>
> * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under
> investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be
> do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
> * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope
> to fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to
> some of us.
>
> My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is
> serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and
> temporary reasons.
>
> The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac
> software itself.
>
> In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see
> trac heberged by some university. There are already several services in
> France, so another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step
> forward.
>
> About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available
> on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the
> situation will be stable.
>
> As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of
> open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large
> private companies.
>
> Frédéric
>
> -
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 12:15:13PM +0100, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Frédéric Chapoton  
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear sage developers and maintainers,
> > >
> > > Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the 
> > > necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
> >
> > it is a disaster that new people can't come aboard easily. It really is 
> > urgent.
> > A convoluted system to get new developers onboard and contributing is
> > a very bad omen for open-source projects, it really is.
> >
> > E.g. try to contribute to something like OpenBSD - I'd sure most
> > potentail contributors  run away screaming,
> > upon learning that they must use CVS and e-mail patches around for approval.
> >
> > >
> > > * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under 
> > > investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should 
> > > be do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
> >
> > but this is far from free, still, and hosting prices are to go with
> > the energy prices, up and up.
> > It's really spending money on a questionable luxury, instead of
> > something useful.
> >
> > > * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is 
> > > hope to fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send 
> > > sshkeys to some of us.
> > >
> > > My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this 
> > > is serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and 
> > > temporary reasons.
> >
> > the reasons are not supreficial, in particular, trac+gitolite software
> > is obsolete.
> > I cannot imagine a new project that would choose it as a platform.
> >
> > >
> > > The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac 
> > > software itself.
> > >
> > > In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see 
> > > trac heberged by some university. There are already several services in 
> > > France, so another coun

Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Matthias Koeppe]

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 7:48:01 AM UTC-7 wst...@gmail.com wrote:

> By not using GitHub we are losing many potential contributors to Sage. 
> GitHub is by far the most popular site for hosting of open source 
> projects, and potential Sage developers are likely to be familiar with 
> GitHub. Not using GitHub adds a huge barrier to entry for Sage 
> development.
>

Indeed.

Lowering these barriers is extremely important to keep the Sage project 
alive.


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Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[William Stein]

Hi,

By not using GitHub we are losing many potential contributors to Sage.
GitHub is by far the most popular site for hosting of open source
projects, and potential Sage developers are likely to be familiar with
GitHub.  Not using GitHub adds a huge barrier to entry for Sage
development.

For example, I don't contribute to Sage anymore because the barrier to
entry via trac is too high.  I contributed (and had accepted) a little
pull request yesterday to numpy **because** the barrier was so low.

 -- William

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 7:40 AM Dima Pasechnik  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2022, 15:26 Kwankyu Lee,  wrote:
>>
>>
>>> the futre of the trac software itself.
>>
>>
>> According to their developer mailing list
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/g/trac-dev
>>
>> the future of trac seems not so ominous to me.
>
>
> 18 posts (in half a dozen threads) since beginning of 2022 does not look 
> healthy to me.
>
> And on their users group one sees that it's populated by people who have 
> projects running SVN and  mercurial - VCSs not supported by GitHub.
>
>
>>
>> Perhaps publishing our fork of trac with customized plugins (?) to sagemath 
>> github repo may help increase  the bus factor about our own trac
>
>
> maintaining our trac does not bring me (or anyone, I suppose) any joy.
>
> If your objection to the move is strong - you are welcome to take over.
>
> Fred, Jan, and me spent together perhaps 40 working hours on this totally 
> thankless task in the last 2 weeks. We could instead have done something 
> useful for Sage proper instead.
>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
>> "sage-devel" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
>> email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/c5050c0a-3bcb-4f01-af40-ff3e7a8cb393n%40googlegroups.com.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
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-- 
William (http://wstein.org)

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Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Fri, 9 Sep 2022, 15:26 Kwankyu Lee,  wrote:

>
> the futre of the trac software itself.
>>
>
> According to their developer mailing list
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/trac-dev
>
> the future of trac seems not so ominous to me.
>

18 posts (in half a dozen threads) since beginning of 2022 does not look
healthy to me.

And on their users group one sees that it's populated by people who have
projects running SVN and  mercurial - VCSs not supported by GitHub.



> Perhaps publishing our fork of trac with customized plugins (?) to
> sagemath github repo may help increase  the bus factor about our own trac
>

maintaining our trac does not bring me (or anyone, I suppose) any joy.

If your objection to the move is strong - you are welcome to take over.

Fred, Jan, and me spent together perhaps 40 working hours on this totally
thankless task in the last 2 weeks. We could instead have done something
useful for Sage proper instead.


>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/c5050c0a-3bcb-4f01-af40-ff3e7a8cb393n%40googlegroups.com
> 
> .
>

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Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Kwankyu Lee]

> the futre of the trac software itself.
>

According to their developer mailing list

https://groups.google.com/g/trac-dev

the future of trac seems not so ominous to me.

Perhaps publishing our fork of trac with customized plugins (?) to sagemath 
github repo may help increase  the bus factor about our own trac

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Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Thierry]

Hi,

let me forward the email of Frédéric as a whole, so that the thread remains
complete.

- Forwarded message from Frédéric Chapoton  -

Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2022 12:15:25 +0200
From: Frédéric Chapoton
To: sagemath-adm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration
to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

Dear sage developers and maintainers,

Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the
necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.

* The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under
investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be
do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
* The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope
to fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to
some of us.

My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is
serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and
temporary reasons.

The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac
software itself.

In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see
trac heberged by some university. There are already several services in
France, so another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step
forward.

About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available
on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the
situation will be stable.

As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of
open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large
private companies.

Frédéric

-



On Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 12:15:13PM +0100, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Frédéric Chapoton  
> wrote:
> >
> > Dear sage developers and maintainers,
> >
> > Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the 
> > necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.
> 
> it is a disaster that new people can't come aboard easily. It really is 
> urgent.
> A convoluted system to get new developers onboard and contributing is
> a very bad omen for open-source projects, it really is.
> 
> E.g. try to contribute to something like OpenBSD - I'd sure most
> potentail contributors  run away screaming,
> upon learning that they must use CVS and e-mail patches around for approval.
> 
> >
> > * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under 
> > investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be 
> > do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.
> 
> but this is far from free, still, and hosting prices are to go with
> the energy prices, up and up.
> It's really spending money on a questionable luxury, instead of
> something useful.
> 
> > * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope 
> > to fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to 
> > some of us.
> >
> > My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is 
> > serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and 
> > temporary reasons.
> 
> the reasons are not supreficial, in particular, trac+gitolite software
> is obsolete.
> I cannot imagine a new project that would choose it as a platform.
> 
> >
> > The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac 
> > software itself.
> >
> > In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see 
> > trac heberged by some university. There are already several services in 
> > France, so another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step 
> > forward.
> >
> > About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available 
> > on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the 
> > situation will be stable.
> 
> Why do you think so? The bus factors of trac and gitolite software are
> very, very small.
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)
> As well as the bus factor for our trac instance.
> 
> >
> > As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of 
> > open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large 
> > private companies.
> Let's not get into this argument. I don't see how paying Google's
> adware criminals US$4000 per year is more ethical than moving over to
> GitHub (which, by the way, gives us a bit of money,
> via GitHub sponsors system :-)).
> Besides, moving from GitHub to GitLab is rather easy, compared to move
> from trac to Git**b.
> 
> Dima
> 
> 

Re: [sagemath-admins] Fwd: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github? [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Frédéric Chapoton  wrote:
>
> Dear sage developers and maintainers,
>
> Whereas I agree that we currently have two issues, I do not agree on the 
> necessity to switch to github and certainly not urgently.

it is a disaster that new people can't come aboard easily. It really is urgent.
A convoluted system to get new developers onboard and contributing is
a very bad omen for open-source projects, it really is.

E.g. try to contribute to something like OpenBSD - I'd sure most
potentail contributors  run away screaming,
upon learning that they must use CVS and e-mail patches around for approval.

>
> * The first issue is the cost of google compute engine. This is under 
> investigation and can be lowered by creating a new project. This should be 
> do-able and could save us 3 $ per day.

but this is far from free, still, and hosting prices are to go with
the energy prices, up and up.
It's really spending money on a questionable luxury, instead of
something useful.

> * The second issue is about new users entering new ssh keys. There is hope to 
> fix that and in the mean-time one could ask new users to send sshkeys to some 
> of us.
>
> My own preference would be to go on using trac, for some years, as this is 
> serving us quite well. We should not change this for superficial and 
> temporary reasons.

the reasons are not supreficial, in particular, trac+gitolite software
is obsolete.
I cannot imagine a new project that would choose it as a platform.

>
> The serious reasons that I see are : money and the futre of the trac software 
> itself.
>
> In my opinion, money is the only serious issue, and I would like to see trac 
> heberged by some university. There are already several services in France, so 
> another country would be better. Germany ? Somebody must step forward.
>
> About the trac software, it now has a python3-compatible version, available 
> on most linux distributions. We should aim to use that. Once done, the 
> situation will be stable.

Why do you think so? The bus factors of trac and gitolite software are
very, very small.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)
As well as the bus factor for our trac instance.

>
> As a side matter, it seems to me that gitlab is much more in the spirit of 
> open source software. We should rather not bow under the power of large 
> private companies.
Let's not get into this argument. I don't see how paying Google's
adware criminals US$4000 per year is more ethical than moving over to
GitHub (which, by the way, gives us a bit of money,
via GitHub sponsors system :-)).
Besides, moving from GitHub to GitLab is rather easy, compared to move
from trac to Git**b.

Dima




>
> Frédéric
>
>
> Le ven. 9 sept. 2022 à 11:55, Dima Pasechnik  a écrit :
>>
>> -- Forwarded message -
>> From: Dima Pasechnik 
>> Date: Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 10:54 AM
>> Subject: Re: [sage-devel] Re: incremental migration to github?
>> [prompted by FUNDING issues!!!] + general flakiness of trac
>> To: sage-devel 
>>
>>
>> I am resurrecting this thread, as in addition of trac continuing to
>> eat up funds (at a rate of over US$ 10 per day at the moment), it has
>> gotten increasingly broken. In particular, in the last 2 weeks no new
>> developers can really join the project, as there is no normal* way to
>> add new ssh keys into trac accounts, and it's not possible to
>> push/pull with "new" github ssh keys, i.e. keys that were not already
>> "known" to trac, i.e. added to the trac store of ssh keys before the
>> last breakage happened.
>>
>> As far as funding is concerned, attempts to bring trac to a "free"
>> hosting stalled (see earlier messages in this thread).
>>
>> A further longer term issue is that trac software is basically on life
>> support, and it's only matter of time it will become totally obsolete.
>>
>> Such a move will allow a considerable simplification of our devops,
>> and free up quite a bit of developer time
>> to do interesting work rather than messing around with semi-obsolete
>> stuff such as trac, gitolite, etc.
>>
>> Importantly, Volker, the release manager, is willing to proceed with the 
>> move.
>>
>> Also, various Sage upstream (and downstream) projects have moved away
>> from trac to github, e.g. Cython, or away from another system to
>> github, e.g. CPython, GAP, jupyter, etc...
>>
>> There is a trac ticket to manage the proposed move,
>> https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/30363 tentatively set for Sage 9.8.
>>
>> I've conducted few experiments with a tool to import trac sites to
>> github: https://github.com/svigerske/trac-to-github, which in
>> particular allows to import trac tickets as github issues; a result of
>> running it on few tickets
>> may be inspected here:
>> https://github.com/dimpase/trac_to_gh/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed
>> (Here issues 1-10 correspond to trac tickets one to one :-))
>> Further work on trac-to-github will be needed, in particular to
>> properly link branches in our git tree, b