Github for OU.org?

[Lyrositor]

This was initially a PM to JWPlatt, but he encouraged me to make this publish, so, here goes.
I was looking at Fisheye today, looking for commits and review-progress, and found that there a sort-of offset between the Mercurial commits and what was displayed in Fisheye. Same thing for Bitbucket. Reviews are still open, but the actual code has already been merged into the repository. I don't really understand where the problem stems from, except that (from my uniformed point of view), OU.org appears to be using a lot of software that's not coordinated together. I like the tools themselves, but I think it might be just too much to manage for now (is Rarified the only person working on this? And CWalther eventually?).

I haven't been checking a lot of OU.org, apart from the occasional glance at the repository updates (hopefully soon to be merged by Cyan). However, over with the Writers (with whom I've started to work too, while I wait for more assignments here and in-between work at the GoMe), I've found Github to be an incredibly useful tool for updating my Lyros Shard (five users and counting! ). They offer so many well-integrated services, in a nice interface, and allow for easy forking (maybe more; I haven't contributed code, but it looks simple enough too, from my perspective; I think I understand the pull request/merge system). I don't see how this really works on Fisheye (a bit more on Bitbucket, but it doesn't seem very active).

So I would like to ask why OU.org doesn't use Github? To a somewhat end-user like me, it looks a lot like the better option. I think it would also really ease code merging between the GoW and OU.org, as well as (probably?) easing Rarified's work.

I don't know if OU.org considered Github before or if this has already been discussed, so sorry if I'm re-hashing a tired debate. Also, I don't know if this current system is in place for Cyan compatibility either.

[JWPlatt]

I'm going to be lazy and just use my PM reply verbatim. One extra comment on Lyrositor's added comment about Cyan compatibility: We don't use the tools we use for Cyan compatibility, but I did know a long while ago that Cyan uses JIRA internally so it did speak to being able to possibly mesh our efforts better. I didn't know whether that would be important or not. I spoke with Lloyd Bell, then QA Manager at Cyan, about it a little bit and he set up a demo for Creative Kingdoms during MagiQuest Online development. That did influence the choices I made while looking at various packages and while specifying and setting things up on Foundry with rarified. No other packages we evaluated were as complete or satisfactory as the Atlassian tools and, as it happened, Foundry could run them.

Hi Lyrositor,

First, thanks for all you've done so far and contributing so persistently, not only here but to the community in general with such things as your seminars. Very nice.

Ok, I just can't spend the time right now explaining Bitbucket and Github, but if you search on at least my posts where I mention Bitbucket, you'll see a lot of it spelled out for you. I know it's the repo of choice for the GoW, but it's a limited vision about how their small group likes to work. That's great for them, and that's fine, but I'd rather leave room for a vision of expansion.

I'll explain a few quick things and I hope you can extrapolate the thoughts behind it all from there, and from my posts on the topic: Github has the edge so far with some good features, but Bitbucket does most of what GitHub does, does some things that Github doesn't do, and is not far behind in the things that Github does that they don't. Atlassian (developer of JIRA, etc, on Foundry) acquired Bitbucket in 2010. Github only does Git. Github is limited in scope and growth by their very name. Bitbucket supports Git and Mercurial right now. Atlassian wants to be "repo agnostic," meaning they want to support all popular repos so people can use their favorite. Atlassian is building integration between their tools and Bitbucket, their social repo web presence. It is for all this and more that I feel that Github is a one trick pony (I used that expression in one of my posts) and Bitbucket is poised for superior functional growth, increasing by far the usefulness of the kinds of enterprise class tools like JIRA we use on Foundry.


JW

[Luna]

I was looking at Fisheye today, looking for commits and review-progress, and found that there a sort-of offset between the Mercurial commits and what was displayed in Fisheye. Same thing for Bitbucket. Reviews are still open, but the actual code has already been merged into the repository.

I would like to see an answer/comment on this part. Apart from that, if I look at Bitbucket I see pull requests that have been open for a month now without any real comment to explain this, which is not very encouraging to me, as developer, to open a pull request myself.

[Christian Walther]

It’s off-topic, but I can’t help commenting on this…

I know it's the repo of choice for the GoW, but it's a limited vision about how their small group likes to work.

… as opposed to how your even smaller group likes to work?

Don’t you think it would be more useful to focus on the developers we have right now, rather than on vague visions of future greatness?

[JWPlatt]

It's not about us at all, but about Bitbucket. They are close enough to make discussion nearly moot and just a matter of religion - apples and apples, Mac or PC. I suspect any gap will close soon enough. You once pointed out that Bitbucket didn't have pull request comments. Now it does. Bitbucket doesn't have inline comments, but it will. And one has to continuously move on to the next thing it doesn't have to make the same point until there's nothing left to complain about. We made a choice - chose a path - to go with Bitbucket upon release of open source. It was not contrary to anyone at the time. It works and I don't believe in fickle, moving to the latest shiney. Bitbucket is at once both very functional now and promising based upon their business model, scope, actions, and philosophy. I think Atlassian and Bitbucket are in a mutually stronger position because of it.

[Christian Walther]

I’m confused.

This bit

You once pointed out

makes me believe you’re replying to me, but what you say has absolutely nothing to do with what my off-topic comment was about. It wasn’t about Bitbucket vs. GitHub (hence off-topic), but about (Bitbucket or GitHub) vs. what we have here. The direction of Luna’s concerns.

In the on-topic regard, yes, I agree – Bitbucket or GitHub makes little difference.

[JWPlatt]

I'm trying to answer while staying on topic. Maybe the off-topic stuff should be split out or merged into another thread. It seems better suited for your topic about old pull requests. But now the work you are contributing toward that has become a living answer to the question. But yes, I'd enjoy a bit more "fun," as rarified put it to me when I discussed the issue with him, in seeing more immediate gratification given to developers. That's part of what Bitbucket is about.

[Lyrositor]

But if Bitbucket can do just about everything Github does, and H'uru needs only Github to manage their project, why does OpenUru.org need all those other Foundry Tools? I can see why some of them might be useful (like JIRA or Jenkins) but to me it looks redundant to use Bitbucket, a Mercurial repository and Fisheye, whereas Bitbucket looks like it could handle everything those three tools combined provide. Wouldn't it ease the load to have to manage just one repository/code review/[more] system instead of depending on the synchronization of three services?

[Christian Walther]

(… crickets …)

Yes, it would.

Part of my motivation for joining up as a maintainer, besides speeding up the current process by adding manpower, was to try to find ways to bend the processes more toward what you have in mind while respecting the desires of the OU management. We’ll see how that goes. At present I have no fully formed recipes, just some ideas that will need to be tested in practice.

[Lyrositor]

I PMed JWPlatt yesterday to see if the discussion could go on. Here was the message I sent:

Hi JWPlatt.
I initially wrote to you because I thought you might give me a bit of help. Indeed, you have answered my original question, but I don't really feel like my later questions stemming from the discussion in the thread have been fully answered. I'd appreciate it immensely if I could have a bit more information on why the foundry is organized this way (see thread), if you could spare the time.
Regards.

JWPlatt then asked if I could provide what flaws I saw with the current situation and what solutions I offered, so here it is too:

Hi,

Okay, here's how I'm understanding it right now (at the time of this writing, the Foundry is offline, so I'm working from memory here):

1. The Foundry is comprised of a bug tracker/management tool called JIRA. It offers advanced functionality not found in Bitbucket or Github. It also has Jenkins, an automated builder. FLAW: I don't see these as flawed, and I think keeping them would be fine.

2. The Foundry has a Mercurial repository for MOSS, CWE, CWE-ou and CWE-ou-minkata, as well as the various moul-scripts. The Foundry also has Fisheye to review these repositories. On top of the Foundry, there is Bitbucket, which hosts a copy of the repositories for a better exchange with the Writers (not sure about this reason). FLAW: You seem to have two repositories for the same content, with a reviewing tool in between which is only configured for one version. Bitbucket doesn't seem to be very regularly updated, presumably due to the time it takes to synchronize everything. SOLUTION: I don't really understand why you can't just use Bitbucket as a repository host, while pointing Fisheye to only Bitbucket, leaving the Foundry Mercurial repository behind.

3. Crucible appears to be used to review code. FLAW: It's being used only on the Foundry Mercurial repository. SOLUTION: Point it to the Bitbucket repo, or use Bitbucket's tools (I don't know how powerful those are, so I don't know how they compare).

As you can see, I feel like moving away from a foundry repo to a Bitbucket repo would make more sense and make code merges easier. I hope I didn't get anything wrong.

JWPlatt then proposed that I post in this thread to include everyone concerned. So, here we go.

Note: The original title ought maybe to be changed, since we've kind of strayed from that rather specific point by now.