[llvm-dev] LLVM Discourse migration: goals justify means?

[James Y Knight via llvm-dev]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 4:04 PM Tom Stellard via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> From my perspective, I feel like a lot of the frustration around some
> of these infrastructure projects could be avoided by improved communication
> to the community about the status of these projects.


Yes, this is the problem. For both issue-tracking and mailing-list
migration, I think that the announcement of an *imminent* migration came as
a surprise to most of the community. Certainly, with Bugzilla->GitHub, it
was widely communicated that we planned to migrate, at some point, and
there was consensus that this was a good idea. Yet, it was still a surprise
that it was going to happen imminently, with no prior review from (or
communcation with) the community as to the *actual final plan*. For the
discourse migration, it was a surprise that it's going to be happening at
all -- the previous thread ended with questions, not conclusions, and there
was no follow-up until "It's happening now". Although, apparently, if
I'd've read the Foundation board minutes, I would've known...

It quite surprises me that, from all appearances, the LLVM IWG is not
actually the entity coordinating or running these projects, but rather that
apparently they're run by the LLVM Foundation Board, completely
independently from the IWG. Now, I'm not in either group, so maybe I'm
mistaken, but:
 Discourse: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-iwg/issues/47 "figure out if the
IWG should help with the migration. If not: close the issue."
 Bugzilla: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-iwg/issues/56 "Just for tracking
the infrastructure effort, the IWG is not involved in this activity."

Even if these projects are sponsored by the Foundation, and the person
doing the technical work is a Foundation board member, I feel like the
projects ought to be coordinated in public under the auspices of the IWG,
rather than coordinated via private Foundation board meetings. (Otherwise,
what's the point of the IWG?)

And, please note, I totally understand *just how hard and time-consuming* it
is to run one of these migrations, both technically *and* socially. I
really do want to support people who are trying to get infrastructure work
done. And I really would like to encourage the ability to make a decision
in less than 2 years. But, the almost complete lack of communication and
information -- to anyone outside of the Foundation Board -- makes it quite
difficult not to feel frustrated.
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