Re: [GCD] Migrating repositories, issues, and patches to Codeberg

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Divya Ranjan <divya@subvertising.org> writes:

> Only 9% of contributors feel like the addition of a PR-based workflow
> ála Github/Codeberg/Gitlab would lead to them contributing further but
> while 203 respondents (a total of 20%) report that it’s the timely
> reviews and actions on contributions that inhibit motivation for
> further contribution.
[...]
> What I do think could lead to better contributions is what’s reported
> in the survey before the workflow change, i.e, timely reviews, [...]

In the short time that we've used Codeberg for guix-science I've found
it much easier to see at a glance what patches await my review and what
their current status is.  This directly improved my ability to review
and merge patches.

I'm no stranger to debbugs and had previously built mumi (which powers
issues.guix.gnu.org); we never managed to reach the same level of
convenience.  People send patches without X-Debbugs-Cc-ing the
associated team and so patches wait for a review for months.  Or they
*do* Cc the team, but the email drowns in all the other Guix emails and
I have no way of listing all patches affecting my field of
responsibility, etc.

Search on mumi has always been a little wonky, and my very limited time
was better used to maintain the ever-growing package collection than
working on improving mumi, which was never been very enthusiastically
received by the community and which inherits all the problems and
limitations of debbugs.  A year ago (or longer?) I decided to only
resume contributions to mumi if the community overwhelmingly commits to
supporting it.  Aside from the very good sustained work by Arun this has
not happened.

I think we've accepted this dysfunctional state for long enough to state
with confidence that there isn't enough collective will, time, and
energy to improve our custom systems to support a more streamlined
review process.  These are not independent topics.  I do expect that
migrating to Codeberg will improve review throughput.

-- 
Ricardo