[Unison-hackers] Move Unison to Git

Wed May 4 16:57:42 EDT 2011

Hi Pascal,

> After some thinking I now believe that it would be best and easiest to
> set up the Issue tracker on launchpad. The main reasons are.
>  - There is already a trunk import of unison into launchpad.net which
> is always in sync with the real trunk.
>  - In my opinion Launchpad has on of the best issue trackers
>  - The bazaar revisions are in sync with the svn revisions so it is
> easy to refer to a certain revision in a bug report as it doesn't
> matter if you refer to bzr or svn.
> 
> We don't need to use the rest of the launchpad features and we can
> continue with the old code hosting and mailing list infrastructure.
> 
> What do you think about my proposal?

My main concern about moving to an issue tracking system is that I'm not yet completely convinced that it will serve the community's needs better than the current (admittedly haphazard) use of mailing lists.  

It's true that having someplace to collect and classify issues will make it easier for people to report things.  My question, though, is: Who will be listening to these reports?

At the moment, issues get discussed on the mailing list(s), where they are seen by a pretty large group of users and developers.  Many issues arise from either misunderstandings or people trying to use Unison in unusual ways, and responses/answers to these often come directly from the user community.  If such issues start getting reported in a tracking system, they're going to be seen by a much smaller group of people -- basically just a few developers and packagers -- and the chances of them getting any response at all are much less.

Before making a change in the way we do business, I'd like to get a better understanding of what is *not* working in the present way and explore whether it can be addressed directly.  (In particular, if there are people that would like to be contributing actively to Unison's maintenance and/or development but that feel hampered in doing so, I'd love to discuss specifics of how we can make things work for you.)

Best,

     - Benjamin

> 
> Regards
> Pascal
> 
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Pascal Bach <pascal.bach at gmx.ch> wrote:
>> I know that Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/) and Redmine
>> (http://www.redmine.org/) have integrated issue trackers. You can even
>> connect them with a (D)VCS of your choice. However you have to set
>> them up yourself. (Or you could use a TurnkeyLinux appliance).
>> 
>> On the other hand I think we could just use an issue tracker of some
>> hosting site without using the rest. I know that this is possible with
>> launchpad.net but I think it would work with others as well.
>> 
>> Best
>> Pascal
>> 
>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Pierce Benjamin C.
>> <bcpierce at cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>>> I must admit that -- with my Debian packager hat -- I would gladly
>>>> welcome an issue tracker. This will help to forward upstream a lot of
>>>> bugs. Most of the time, I need to forward a bug from the Debian BTS and
>>>> just don't do it, because I have no time to discuss it on the mailing
>>>> list. The mailing list also doesn't provide a pragmatic way to know if
>>>> the bug is closed or not...
>>> 
>>> If there is a free-standing issue tracker (not tied to some particular hosting or version control system) that can be set up with a small amount of effort (<1 hour), I would be open to discussing setting one up for Unison.
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>>   - Benjamin
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> If there are active maintainers / compilers of Unison distributions
>>>>>> who feel that they could do their jobs more effectively with commit
>>>>>> rights to the main SVN repository, just let me know and we can make
>>>>>> that happen.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It would be interesting to hear what version control the packagers use
>>>>> and if not SVN how you solve the problem that the program version
>>>>> numbering depends on SVN. If you are packager please let us know how
>>>>> you do it.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> You can easily manage commit rights (just as any forge in fact) on the
>>>> OCaml Forge, by adding people to the project.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Sylvain Le Gall
>>>> --
>>>> My company: http://www.ocamlcore.com
>>>> Linkedin:   http://fr.linkedin.com/in/sylvainlegall
>>>> Start an OCaml project here: http://forge.ocamlcore.org
>>>> OCaml blogs:                 http://planet.ocamlcore.org
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Unison-hackers mailing list
>>>> Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu
>>>> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Unison-hackers mailing list
>>> Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu
>>> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers
>>> 
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> Unison-hackers mailing list
> Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu
> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers