[llvm-dev] RFC: Move the test-suite LLVM project to GitHub?

[Chandler Carruth via llvm-dev]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:26 PM John Criswell <jtcriswel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Chandler,
>
> First, can you articulate why you want to move the test suite to Github?
> Is it taking up too much space, or is there some other problem that you're
> trying to solve?  I think you clearly explain why moving the revision
> history isn't necessary, but it's not clear to me what problem you are
> trying to solve.
>

Well, I tried in my original email, but perhaps I should state the issue
more generally.

The costs of us managing our own hosting of the test suite seem higher than
for the rest of the project (size, scope, license diversity, etc), and yet
the benefits of us managing our own hosting (compared to using a managed
service like github) seem *much* lower.

It will also make checking out the test suite, especially as it grows,
substantially faster.

And I really do think the test suite should grow, and grow a lot. I don't
think we should *always* run all of it, I actually think having good,
focused slices of the test suite is really important (this has come up
elsewhere on the thread). But I think we should also be in the business of
making it easier to get more testing for LLVM. And one way to do that would
be to move to a faster and cheaper (in maintenance/support terms) solution
such as using well known managed hosting like github.

So ultimately, I guess I'm trying to clear a path for growth of the test
suite (within reason) and reduce support burden on our common
infrastructure.

Neither are really pressing problems, but they both seem worth addressing.


> Second, if we move the revision history to Github, it would be nice to
> archive the existing Subversion history somewhere (e.g., leave it on
> llvm.org but disable commit access to it).  The test suite has been used
> in numerous research papers, so keeping the revision history around is good
> practice.  We should only delete the Subversion revision history if keeping
> it around is just too onerous.
>

Oh, I wouldn't want to delete it. Your re-interpretation was correct, I
just mean that a strict, linear, correlated flow of history common to the
test suite and the compiler doesn't seem important. Sorry for confusion,
i'll follow up more on the history point on the relevant sub-thread.


>
> Third, I assume your plan is to continue to track changes on Github. Is
> that correct?
>

Yep. I definitely wouldn't want to see any real changes to process here,
just a different "master" so-to-speak. But this also gets to the "there
would be a ton of stuff to figure out if this is the right direction"
issue. =] So sorry for the hand waving.

>
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