Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Martin Grigorov <mg...@apache.org>]

Hi devs,

Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
committer.
I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting to
him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at users@,
giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for open
issues, etc.
Few days later he came back with the following questions:

1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
months back.
I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being - PRs
are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git, Apache
Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit, or
similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point of
view.

2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like Bugzilla.
Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).

I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
with any of them.
Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague didn't
start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by moving
to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for newcomers.


Martin Grigorov
Wicket Training and Consulting
https://twitter.com/mtgrigorov

Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Martin Grigorov <mg...@apache.org>]

Hi Chris,

On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Christopher Schultz <
chris@christopherschultz.net> wrote:

> Martin,
>
> On 6/8/16 3:25 AM, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 07/06/2016 10:17, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> >>> Hi devs,
> >>>
> >>> Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
> >>> committer.
> >>> I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting
> to
> >>> him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at
> >> users@,
> >>> giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for
> open
> >>> issues, etc.
> >>> Few days later he came back with the following questions:
> >>>
> >>> 1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
> >>> I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
> >>> experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
> >>> months back.
> >>> I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being -
> >> PRs
> >>> are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git,
> >> Apache
> >>> Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit,
> or
> >>> similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point
> of
> >>> view.
> >>
> >> If I recall correctly, the consensus last time around was that there was
> >> merit in exploring the options for using git further with a view to
> >> migrating if the majority were convinced there was a benefit to the
> move.
> >>
> >> There is an outstanding task (I need to chase it up) for the infra team
> >> to look at if we could move to a single git repo for multiple branches
> >> or would need multiple repos.
> >>
> >
> > One repo should be possible.
> > Even if there are some problems with the initial conversion from SVN to
> Git
> > the person dealing with it could create N Git repos and then with the
> help
> > of "git remote add" combine them into one with N branches and finally
> push
> > those branches into a single repository.
> >
> >
> >>
> >>> 2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
> >>> It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
> >>> To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like
> >> Bugzilla.
> >>> Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
> >>> runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
> >>> tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).
> >>
> >> My personal view is Jira is overly complex and horribly slow. Bugzilla
> >>
> >
> > I think JIRA is slower because the majority of the projects are there.
> > But I guess it would be an overkill for Infra to maintain several
> instances
> > of JIRA (e.g. sharded by project name).
>
> I think it's slower because it's a sledgehammer where a screwdriver will
> do the job. I've never liked JIRA, but as was previously said "tools are
> tools".
>

At my $dailyJob JIRA is not slow at all.
It is Apache JIRA installation problem, not every JIRA installation.
If you are subscribed to infra@ you will see that people complain
relatively often that it is either down or slow. Last such mail is from
yesterday!
IMO Apache JIRA should be split into several instances.
But here is not the place to discuss this topic!

What I was trying to explain is that Tomcat looks like an ageing product
from a tooling point of view: Bugzilla, SVN, ANT, Gump.
It is hard to make Tomcat development attractive to work with tools from
the 90s (figuratively said).

I am not saying that by changing the tooling suddenly a lot of developers
will want to contribute!
I just share the opinion that many developers consider these things when
trying to find an OSS to contribute to.


> >> just works. We don't need any of the extra features Jira offers. Do we
> >> want any of them? None come to mind. Others may have a different view.
> >>
> >
> > I personally like the JIRA plugins that integrate with the SCM tools.
> > Committing with "PROJECT_NAME-1234" in the commit message automatically
> > adds a comment to the respective ticket with a link to Git/SVN repo. It
> is
> > very easy to explore the history of a ticket.
>
> All of this can be done with svn + bugzilla, too. I guess just nobody
> bothered to do it @ASF until JIRA came along.
>
> > Also it has a proper "Fix version" field. With it it is much easier to
> > create a changelog. No need to maintain one manually.
>
> Bugzilla has a "Target Milestone", but that is disabled in Bugzilla,
> probably because the list of milestones would get insanely long. Maybe
> another reason that JIRA is so slow: all that metadata is actually in
> there instead of having been deemed "too much" at some point in the past.
>
> >>> I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
> >>> with any of them.
> >>> Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague
> >> didn't
> >>> start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by
> moving
> >>> to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for
> >> newcomers.
> >>
> >> The Tomcat community tends to change development technology when it can
> >> see some direct benefit from the change. It doesn't change just to use
> >> the latest shiny new toy.
> >>
> >
> > I totally agree with "see some benefit"!
> > I don't agree with "new" :-) Both Git and JIRA are on the market for
> quite
> > some time.
>
> The age of the toy is not really relevant. It's the relative merit to
> the current toy. So far, I don't see any merit in switching to JIRA. My
> recent forays into git have shown me that it can help with collaboration
> from non-committers, which I think is always a good thing.
>
> -chris
>
>

Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>]

Martin,

On 6/8/16 3:25 AM, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 07/06/2016 10:17, Martin Grigorov wrote:
>>> Hi devs,
>>>
>>> Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
>>> committer.
>>> I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting to
>>> him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at
>> users@,
>>> giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for open
>>> issues, etc.
>>> Few days later he came back with the following questions:
>>>
>>> 1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
>>> I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
>>> experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
>>> months back.
>>> I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being -
>> PRs
>>> are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git,
>> Apache
>>> Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit, or
>>> similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point of
>>> view.
>>
>> If I recall correctly, the consensus last time around was that there was
>> merit in exploring the options for using git further with a view to
>> migrating if the majority were convinced there was a benefit to the move.
>>
>> There is an outstanding task (I need to chase it up) for the infra team
>> to look at if we could move to a single git repo for multiple branches
>> or would need multiple repos.
>>
> 
> One repo should be possible.
> Even if there are some problems with the initial conversion from SVN to Git
> the person dealing with it could create N Git repos and then with the help
> of "git remote add" combine them into one with N branches and finally push
> those branches into a single repository.
> 
> 
>>
>>> 2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
>>> It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
>>> To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like
>> Bugzilla.
>>> Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
>>> runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
>>> tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).
>>
>> My personal view is Jira is overly complex and horribly slow. Bugzilla
>>
> 
> I think JIRA is slower because the majority of the projects are there.
> But I guess it would be an overkill for Infra to maintain several instances
> of JIRA (e.g. sharded by project name).

I think it's slower because it's a sledgehammer where a screwdriver will
do the job. I've never liked JIRA, but as was previously said "tools are
tools".

>> just works. We don't need any of the extra features Jira offers. Do we
>> want any of them? None come to mind. Others may have a different view.
>>
> 
> I personally like the JIRA plugins that integrate with the SCM tools.
> Committing with "PROJECT_NAME-1234" in the commit message automatically
> adds a comment to the respective ticket with a link to Git/SVN repo. It is
> very easy to explore the history of a ticket.

All of this can be done with svn + bugzilla, too. I guess just nobody
bothered to do it @ASF until JIRA came along.

> Also it has a proper "Fix version" field. With it it is much easier to
> create a changelog. No need to maintain one manually.

Bugzilla has a "Target Milestone", but that is disabled in Bugzilla,
probably because the list of milestones would get insanely long. Maybe
another reason that JIRA is so slow: all that metadata is actually in
there instead of having been deemed "too much" at some point in the past.

>>> I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
>>> with any of them.
>>> Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague
>> didn't
>>> start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by moving
>>> to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for
>> newcomers.
>>
>> The Tomcat community tends to change development technology when it can
>> see some direct benefit from the change. It doesn't change just to use
>> the latest shiny new toy.
>>
> 
> I totally agree with "see some benefit"!
> I don't agree with "new" :-) Both Git and JIRA are on the market for quite
> some time.

The age of the toy is not really relevant. It's the relative merit to
the current toy. So far, I don't see any merit in switching to JIRA. My
recent forays into git have shown me that it can help with collaboration
from non-committers, which I think is always a good thing.

-chris

Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Martin Grigorov <mg...@apache.org>]

Hi,


On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org> wrote:

> On 07/06/2016 10:17, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> > Hi devs,
> >
> > Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
> > committer.
> > I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting to
> > him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at
> users@,
> > giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for open
> > issues, etc.
> > Few days later he came back with the following questions:
> >
> > 1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
> > I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
> > experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
> > months back.
> > I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being -
> PRs
> > are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git,
> Apache
> > Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit, or
> > similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point of
> > view.
>
> If I recall correctly, the consensus last time around was that there was
> merit in exploring the options for using git further with a view to
> migrating if the majority were convinced there was a benefit to the move.
>
> There is an outstanding task (I need to chase it up) for the infra team
> to look at if we could move to a single git repo for multiple branches
> or would need multiple repos.
>

One repo should be possible.
Even if there are some problems with the initial conversion from SVN to Git
the person dealing with it could create N Git repos and then with the help
of "git remote add" combine them into one with N branches and finally push
those branches into a single repository.


>
> > 2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
> > It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
> > To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like
> Bugzilla.
> > Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
> > runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
> > tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).
>
> My personal view is Jira is overly complex and horribly slow. Bugzilla
>

I think JIRA is slower because the majority of the projects are there.
But I guess it would be an overkill for Infra to maintain several instances
of JIRA (e.g. sharded by project name).


> just works. We don't need any of the extra features Jira offers. Do we
> want any of them? None come to mind. Others may have a different view.
>

I personally like the JIRA plugins that integrate with the SCM tools.
Committing with "PROJECT_NAME-1234" in the commit message automatically
adds a comment to the respective ticket with a link to Git/SVN repo. It is
very easy to explore the history of a ticket.
Also it has a proper "Fix version" field. With it it is much easier to
create a changelog. No need to maintain one manually.


>
> > I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
> > with any of them.
> > Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague
> didn't
> > start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by moving
> > to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for
> newcomers.
>
> The Tomcat community tends to change development technology when it can
> see some direct benefit from the change. It doesn't change just to use
> the latest shiny new toy.
>

I totally agree with "see some benefit"!
I don't agree with "new" :-) Both Git and JIRA are on the market for quite
some time.


>
> git does have some benefits but also some potential complications. My
> view is we are around the tipping point for svn -> git.
>
> Mark
>
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@tomcat.apache.org
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>
>

Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Huxing Zhang <hu...@alibaba-inc.com>]

+1 for migrating from svn to git.

------------------------------------------------------------------
From:Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org>
Time:2016 Jun 7 (Tue) 17:33
To:Tomcat Developers List <de...@tomcat.apache.org>
Subject:Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers


On 07/06/2016 10:17, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> Hi devs,
> 
> Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
> committer.
> I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting to
> him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at users@,
> giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for open
> issues, etc.
> Few days later he came back with the following questions:
> 
> 1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
> I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
> experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
> months back.
> I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being - PRs
> are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git, Apache
> Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit, or
> similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point of
> view.

If I recall correctly, the consensus last time around was that there was
merit in exploring the options for using git further with a view to
migrating if the majority were convinced there was a benefit to the move.

There is an outstanding task (I need to chase it up) for the infra team
to look at if we could move to a single git repo for multiple branches
or would need multiple repos.

> 2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
> It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
> To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like Bugzilla.
> Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
> runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
> tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).

My personal view is Jira is overly complex and horribly slow. Bugzilla
just works. We don't need any of the extra features Jira offers. Do we
want any of them? None come to mind. Others may have a different view.

> I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
> with any of them.
> Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague didn't
> start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by moving
> to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for newcomers.

The Tomcat community tends to change development technology when it can
see some direct benefit from the change. It doesn't change just to use
the latest shiny new toy.

git does have some benefits but also some potential complications. My
view is we are around the tipping point for svn -> git.

Mark


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Re: Using modern development tools for friendlier environment for newcomers

[Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org>]

On 07/06/2016 10:17, Martin Grigorov wrote:
> Hi devs,
> 
> Recently a colleague of mine asked me what it takes to become an Apache
> committer.
> I've explained him that he has to choose a project that is interesting to
> him and start participating in the mailing lists (helping others at users@,
> giving opinion and testing releases at dev@), providing patches for open
> issues, etc.
> Few days later he came back with the following questions:
> 
> 1) Why Tomcat still uses SVN?
> I've told him that this is the SCM tool most of the committers have
> experience with and there were some discussions to move to Git several
> months back.
> I've recommended him to use GitHub's Pull Requests for the time being - PRs
> are monitored and merged if approved. Even if Tomcat was using Git, Apache
> Infra doesn't provide tool with Pull Request support (GitLab, Gerrit, or
> similar) anyway so there is no big difference from a contributor point of
> view.

If I recall correctly, the consensus last time around was that there was
merit in exploring the options for using git further with a view to
migrating if the majority were convinced there was a benefit to the move.

There is an outstanding task (I need to chase it up) for the infra team
to look at if we could move to a single git repo for multiple branches
or would need multiple repos.

> 2) Why Tomcat uses Bugzilla?
> It is archaic and its UI is unfriendly - he said.
> To be honest I didn't have a good answer here. I also don't like Bugzilla.
> Everybody knows how to use JIRA! It is hard to explain that Apache JIRA
> runs on Tomcat, but Tomcat project itself uses Perl software for issue
> tracking (no matter how good Bugzilla is).

My personal view is Jira is overly complex and horribly slow. Bugzilla
just works. We don't need any of the extra features Jira offers. Do we
want any of them? None come to mind. Others may have a different view.

> I know that SVN, Git, JIRA, Bugzilla are just tools. We can do our work
> with any of them.
> Maybe there are more (and more important!) reasons why my colleague didn't
> start contributing to Tomcat yet but I also agree with him that by moving
> to more modern tools Tomcat will become easier and friendlier for newcomers.

The Tomcat community tends to change development technology when it can
see some direct benefit from the change. It doesn't change just to use
the latest shiny new toy.

git does have some benefits but also some potential complications. My
view is we are around the tipping point for svn -> git.

Mark


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