[llvm-dev] IMPORTANT: LLVM Bugzilla migration

Mon Nov 22 12:30:24 PST 2021

On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 12:43 PM Anton Korobeynikov <anton at korobeynikov.info>
wrote:

> > Looking at the PDF you posted on the other thread, it appears that users
> who did not fill out the migration google-sheet have their comments
> migrated with no author-attribution of any kind (not name, not username, or
> even "Anonymous LLVM Contributor #123". Is that correct?
> That's correct. All such contributions will be attributed to
> "llvmbot". There is no other way we can enter "anonymous" data to
> github. However, we do provide the backlink to the original bz issue.
> We have to anonymize the data in order to comply with some regulations
> and there is no way to save the attribution without the explicit
> consent.

If we can attribute it to an anonymous entity, e.g. by putting "Anonymous
LLVM Contributor 123 wrote:" at the top of a comment by llvmbot, at least
readers can understand whether two comments on a bug are from the same
person or from different people, for example. Can we at least do something
like that?

> Thus, it seems pretty important that at least all of the active
> contributors have filled out the sheet before the migration -- have they?
> There are more than 1k users with commit access to LLVM repo.
> Approximately half of them filled the survey.  However, there is no
> way we can force the contributor to give consent.

Certainly I wasn't asking to force anyone. Rather, I wish to ensure that
the people aren't going to be _surprised and unhappy_ when they
realize they were omitted! I'd like to make sure folks are given every
opportunity to fix that, before it's too late.

I expect nearly everyone who is actively interacting with LLVM bugzilla
wants to be included in the migration mapping. Certainly there's going to
be a rare person who actively *doesn't* want it, and a long tail of people
who are no longer active in the community, or not easily contacted, who
will be excluded because they're unresponsive. But, if there are many
people who are currently active in the community (e.g. active on bugzilla
or making commits), and yet have not filled out the survey, I think that
indicates that we have a problem with outreach.

And, if such a problem exists, I think we ought to address that
problem before migration.

everyone who cared about "saving" the contributions would've filled the
> form by now.

I very much doubt it's true that everyone who cares will have filled it out
already. I mean, just speaking for myself...I think I filled out the form?
But maybe I only intended to, but forgot to get around to it? Who knows.
Assuming I actually did, I'm certain there are more people in the same
situation who actually did _not_.

And on a more general note --

It worries me how little information has been communicated with the
community overall for this project, especially now that the migration is
supposed to happen imminently! I *completely* understand how painful it can
be to do a migration like this, and how it can feel annoying to have people
bugging you about things, yet not actively helping to complete the
migration. But...we are going to be stuck with this conversion for a long
time, so it is important to validate that people are going to be overall
happy with it, right?

Some other questions that pop into my mind:
- Has a full test migration been done now? Or is it impossible to do a full
test migration?
- What happens if the migration fails in the middle due to an unforeseen
error?
- What sorts of verifications of correctness have been done on the
migration output?
- What problematic cases are "known issues" which have been deemed
unimportant and therefore ignored?
- How are comments migrated? (e.g. it would appear that some effort was put
into ensuring that english prose gets migrated as variable-width text, and
code sections get migrated as fixed-width text?)
- How is all the other data migrated? _Is_ all of it migrated? Or are
certain fields deemed useless, so we don't migrate them?
- Can we let additional people have access to a test migration, to verify
that it seems reasonable? Even if it can't be made public, can the
migration can be done to a private repository which can be opened to other
llvm community members? (A couple PDFs is certainly better than nothing,
but...) What's preventing the ability to do that?
- Is there code that implements this migration that folks can look at
and/or suggest changes to?

Or, really, more fundamentally -- where's the document describing the plan?
I think that's the root of the issue -- there should be a plan written up,
not just one-off answers to those questions that popped up in my mind I
listed above, but a document fully describing the final plan for this
migration, and why each choice made there is thought to be the best option
(or, at least, best *practical* option, if not actually the best).

I note that people posted suggestions on the previous thread which were
dismissed as outdated and unhelpful -- but that's because nobody else has
been told any of the information about what tradeoffs have already been
considered and dismissed, and what the actual problems are/were. Having a
written plan would also help ensure people aren't going to give unhelpful
redundant suggestions...
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