Since I think we're risking confusion on the point here, let me clarify
that at least my response to this thread should not be read as
opposition (or support) for a migration to github. I am expressing no
opinion on that matter. I see the primary point being discussed in this
thread being the decision making process proposed, not the decision itself.
Philip
On 10/6/21 10:26 AM, Chris Tetreault via llvm-dev wrote:
> … nothing's really changed from the previous conversations on PRs
versus Github, apart from the announcement of end of support by the
upstream company, but that was quite a while ago now, and even with
the stale Arcanist issue, there hasn't been a big push from community
members to change …
James, If you’ll forgive me for cherry-picking a small part of your
point, I think it bears mentioning that human beings tend to ignore
future problems until they become current problems. Most of us here
want to work on compilers, not deal with infrastructure. This doesn’t
mean that the status quo is ok.
As I see it, it would be a mistake to just continue on with
zombie-phabricator as we have. Perhaps the board of directors could
have taken a different tone when presenting this issue, but I think
they are doing the right thing by forcing a change soon. Tools are
degrading, and security fixes are not being implemented. If we do
nothing we’re all going to wake up some day and find that the github
repo has had its owner changed or somesuch catastrophe. We need to do
**something**, and I think setting a deadline for a change was the
right call.
From my perspective, there are 4 reasonable things we can do, in order
of disruptiveness:
1. Investigate a community replacement for phabricator. Does Phorge
meet our needs? Is there a maintained fork of phabricator? Can we
just drop in some replacement?
2. Fork Phabricator, and take on the maintenance burden ourselves.
This sounds like work.
3. Move to github PRs. As others have mentioned, there are pros and
cons to this.
4. Something else? We’d have to figure out what this is, and justify
it over options 1-3.
If the deadline the board has set is unpalatable to the community,
then perhaps it makes sense to fork Phabricator, and then decide on a
longer term migration plan. But we need to do something and we need to
do it now, not when there’s an actual fire.
Personally, I like Phabricator, and find github PRs to be tedious to
work with. If we went with github PRs, I would be able to work, but I
would prefer something more like phabricator.
thanks,
Chris Tetreault
*From:* cfe-dev <cfe-dev-boun...@lists.llvm.org> *On Behalf Of *James
Henderson via cfe-dev
*Sent:* Wednesday, October 6, 2021 1:47 AM
*To:* Tanya Lattner <tanyalatt...@llvm.org>
*Cc:* llvm-dev <llvm-...@lists.llvm.org>; Renato Golin
<rengo...@gmail.com>; clang developer list <cfe-...@lists.llvm.org>;
openmp-dev (openmp-...@lists.llvm.org) <openmp-...@lists.llvm.org>;
LLDB Dev <lldb-dev@lists.llvm.org>
*Subject:* Re: [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] RFC: Code Review Process
*WARNING:*This email originated from outside of Qualcomm. Please be
wary of any links or attachments, and do not enable macros.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but if the community consensus is that we
should continue to use Phabricator, and Phabricator is not being
provided/maintained by the LLVM Foundation, isn't it moot what the
LLVM Foundation/Infrastructure Working Group recommends/wants to
happen? The current maintainers would continue to maintain Phabricator
(assuming they wanted to), and people would still be able to review
things there. What would happen if the Foundation officially supported
PRs, without community consensus (in particular from the Phabricator
maintainers), is a potential split in the community, with some
continuing in the old way and others using the new way (and presumably
some choosing to review on both platforms). This cannot be good.
I'm all for the discussion to be had, about whether we switch, but as
far as I can see, nothing's really changed from the previous
conversations on PRs versus Github, apart from the announcement of end
of support by the upstream company, but that was quite a while ago
now, and even with the stale Arcanist issue, there hasn't been a big
push from community members to change: the consensus in the posts
discussing this and the moving to PRs seems to still be "there are
things that are blocking switching still".
At the most, from this IWG/Foundation consultation, it should be that
the Foundation recommends one or other approach, and is willing to
provide X infrastructure required. The community can then choose to
agree with whatever approach is recommended or stick with the status
quo. There shouldn't be an edict that says we will do one thing or the
other.
Another side-point: whilst the IWG may consist of people who care
about LLVM, there are far more people who care as much, but who just
don't have the time to participate in such a group. This is
particularly important to note, because the community does not elect
members to this group. To an extent, the same is also true of the
Foundation board itself, since there are plenty of people who may not
agree with their decisions, but don't have the time to volunteer for
the board. I'm not suggesting that there's any malice in this
discussion, and indeed, the fact that it's open to community comments
certainly is helpful, but I'd be worried of some kind of echo
chamber/unconscious bias within the small groups suggesting there is
consensus for one approach, when the wider community thinks otherwise.
James
On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 at 20:52, Tanya Lattner via llvm-dev
<llvm-...@lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-...@lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
Hello! The purpose of this email is to start a discussion about
our code review tools. No decisions have been made about changing
tools. The idea behind a timeline is so that information could be
gathered in a timely manner. The Infrastructure Working Group was
formed to bring together community members who have an experience
and/or passion regarding infrastructure. Anyone can participate in
this working group and like the LLVM Foundation, the minutes are
all made public.
The LLVM Foundation’s mission is to support the LLVM project and
help ensure the health and productivity of of the community and
this is done through numerous ways including infrastructure. I do
not think it is a negative thing that the foundation board of
directors would be discussing our current tools and gathering
information how how well they work and how we can make them
better. As the legal entity who bares financial and legal
responsibility for a lot of the infrastructure, this would make
sense. This also makes sense because of the people involved who
care a lot about LLVM and the project. But, the LLVM Foundation
does not pay for Phabricator and we are very grateful for Google’s
support of this critical piece of our infrastructure.
Regarding Phabricator, there are a couple of pieces of information
that were provided to the LLVM Foundation by maintainers (maybe
previous it sounds like) of this instance and how we may need to
look into alternative ways to support it. In addition, Phacility
itself has publicly stated that it is winding down operations.
(https://admin.phacility.com/phame/post/view/11/phacility_is_winding_down_operations/
<https://admin.phacility.com/phame/post/view/11/phacility_is_winding_down_operations/>).
Lastly, there are questions about why we are not using GitHub pull
requests as we are on GitHub and that might be the natural path to
take for a number of reasons.
The above reasons are why the RFC was written. Perhaps it wasn’t
written in the best way, but I also feel like it is being read in
a negative way which is incredibly disappointing given I don’t
feel there is a valid reason for this.
-Tanya
On Oct 5, 2021, at 11:35 AM, Renato Golin via llvm-dev
<llvm-...@lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-...@lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 at 19:16, Tom Stellard <tstel...@redhat.com
<mailto:tstel...@redhat.com>> wrote:
However, it's not a good position for the Board to be
responsible
for something that it doesn't have control over. If
Google decided to stop hosting
Phabricator for some reason (unlikely, but not
impossible), the Board would be
responsible for finding a replacement.
Sorry, this is a very weak reason for such a strong worded "RFC".
I _cannot_ imagine "Google" stopping to support something so
quickly as to leave the foundation without recourse. And even
if they did, *no one* would blame the foundation for that.
Even if you ignore all the effort that hundreds of their
engineers have done over the past decade to the project, this
would hurt Google more than anyone else. It's a far fetched
concern.
And if the foundation wants "control" of a piece of
infrastructure that Google has been maintaining for years,
then this is a different discussion. Hopefully one that
doesn't involve unilateral decisions.
The main risk is that Phabricator is no longer maintained
upstream.
There was already an issue[1] recently where the arc tool
stopped working and won't
be fixed upstream. Using unmaintained software is a bigger
risk.
I don't like using unmaintained software either, but I think
our Phab has had more attention than the upstream project. And
no one has to use arc, I certainly never have.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Phab and I think Github would
bring new people to the project, but it's gotta be done the
right way, and pushing it isn't it.
We, meaning the LLVM Board of Directors. And really the
problem isn't the self-hosting
so much as it's the lack of an enforceable maintenance
agreement the Foundation and the
maintainers.
The problem isn't self-hosting at all, given that Google is
doing that. (apologies, I assumed otherwise earlier).
Neither is maintenance, given Google is doing that too.
The only thing that's left is control, and I don't really
understand why this is important, as I explained above.
cheers,
--renato
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