[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] RFC: Switching from Bugzilla to Github Issues [UPDATED]

[Sam McCall via cfe-dev]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 9:03 PM Tom Stellard <tstellar at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 04/24/2020 03:24 AM, Sam McCall wrote:
> > clangd's experience using github issues to track bugs (in a separate
> repo) has been very positive, and I'm glad you're pushing on this!
> >
> > Part of this has been that our issue tracker has been scoped to our
> subproject only, which is a scope that the tool works well for (on the user
> and developer side).
> > As such I don't think we should migrate clangd to a using the monorepo
> bugtracker. Email subscription to a label is better than nothing, but worse
> than a separate repo.
> > Removing the clangd label from the monorepo bugtracker seems like the
> simplest thing, though I'm happy to work on auto-moving bugs if that's
> better.
> >
> > (I'd suggest considering the same for other subprojects, though I know
> that's not a popular opinion here)
>
> I think it's important for everything in the monorepo to use the same bug
> tracker.
>
> There are advantages to having code in the monorepo (e.g. free
> updates for API changes, a more consistent build experience, etc.).
> But there are also costs, as you have pointed out, like having to use
> a less than ideal bug tracker.  It's really up to sub-projects
> to make the decision about whether these benefits are worth the costs.
> The flang developers have just gone through this process and have
> had to make some sacrifices to get the code in, but ultimately felt the
> sacrifices were worth it.
>
> I think it hurts the ability of developers and users to collaborate
> effectively,
> if the infrastructure for the project is spread across too many different
> places.
> And good collaboration is key for a project of this size with some many
> tightly
> connected components.
>
(sorry, I should probably not tilt at this windmill. More on-topic stuff
below, I promise!)
Right, and I think having a single-project view of the LLVM organization is
a mistake: it's a graph of projects, some are highly connected and some are
not.
The monorepo has a strong technical reason: the graph is connected and
accepting a CI boundary anywhere is expensive in the absence of stable APIs.
But this is much less true for bug tracking systems: the cost to crossing
boundaries is smaller.
For clangd, the benefit of sharing a tracker with clang AST+Sema is less
than the cost of sharing a tracker with clang codegen, LLVM proper, LLD,
flang, MLIR, ... (and the opposite is true for source control/CI).
Anyway, this is going to depend on what part(s) of the project graph you
touch: people connected to many parts will want to make coordinating with
hundreds of people incrementally, while people connected to few parts are
far better served by communicating only with the people they need to
(communication famously scales badly).

Getting back to the proposal we are discussing.  Do you have any specific
> feedback
> for improvements that might help make it align better with the kind of
> experience
> the clangd users and developers are looking for?
>
Sorry if it seemed I was trying to derail: I think sharding into multiple
repos *is* a specific improvement that should be considered, though there
are arguments against it.
If "the proposal we are discussing" doesn't admit changes, well, I'm +1 on
its current form too :-)

Other suggestions:

Issue templates: I think you need at least one for each component.
Users will be less familiar with the bug tracker conventions than
developers are, especially given that this one is unusual in covering
multiple products. Forcing a choice between the "component" tags as well as
guiding them to include relevant info leaves less of an unstructured mess
to triage. This helps mitigate the fact that the UI won't separate
component tags like "lld" from others like "crash-on-invalid".
(Fortunately these don't need to be maintained centrally: editing templates
just needs commit access)

Tag namespace: I can see this becoming a mess quickly, it's hard to choose
the right tags if there are too many, so there can be a bit of a
tragedy-of-the-commons. (Seeding it with lots of "component" tags doesn't
help). Maybe these should be centrally designed.
I wonder if the "projects" feature can be used for components? It's not
really the intended purpose (looks like they're supposed to be time-limited
like sprints) but maybe they can work as a second tag namespace, and the
name fits...

Releases: my most active times on bugzilla are when dealing with release
blockers in the run-up to a release. As GH issues lacks blocking bugs, I'm
a bit curious what the workflow is for this (and probably worth considering
before the release is upon us). I guess "projects" might be a good fit.

Preserving bug numbers: seems worth it to me, but I have no special insight.

Again, thanks a lot for working on this, I think it'll be a substantial
improvement to land it in any form (however much I end up using it myself).


>
> - Tom
>
>
>
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