Re: [4diac-dev] 回复: 回复: Foundation Code and Issue services reminder

[Alois Zoitl <alois.zoitl@xxxxxx>]

Dear Friends of Eclipse 4diac,

I have been rather quiet in this discussion so far. The main reason was that I wanted to hear the different points of the Eclipse 4diac community. In addition
to all your comments, for which I'm very grateful, I also followed the discussions on the Eclipse cross project and platform development mailing lists.
Furthermore I also had one on one discussions with several people on this topic. 

As I expected from the beginning there is no single this or that answer to the Gitlab vs Github question.

As several of you pointed out Gitlab is clearly the technical superior platform. However the more I read and the more I talked with people in the end it will
not be technical decision but a numbers game decision. 

As Tibalt nicely pointed out the important Eclipse projects are all moving the Github. This includes for us the Eclipse Platform, EGit/JGit, JDT, GEF Classic,
Xtext. I see especially the first two of this list as important signs. Because I expect that with the move EGit support for Github workflows will improve with
the next releases. I know that I can do everything also from the command line. But what I really liked about the Gerrit workflow was the great EGit support.
This reduced my effort for rebasing, code reviews, testing tremendously. And I would like to have something like that again. Don't see this happening for
Gitlab.

As I said I don't expect that just by moving to a new platform we will get out of the blue more contributors. But, I want to point out who most of our casual
contributors are: At least from our side these are students. And I know this is the case for others as well. Students who do a project with Eclipse 4diac and
find a few issues which they would like or should fix as part of their project. They are with us a few months at best. Making it easy for them to contribute is
something we should not neglect. We committers and regular contributors have time to learn a new workflow and adjust to it. They don't. When I talk with the
students doing a project with me nearly all of them know the Github workflow and have used it in one or the other way. So they could submit there improvements
without that we have to teach them anything. Given the short time they are on a student project this is a great advantage of Github.  

I personally was not fan of neither the Github nor the Gitlab workflow. In the last weeks I started to support the Eclipse GEF Classic project and got my feet
wet with the Github workflow. I still have my issues with it. But I also see its advantages. Just the stuff that I did over the last 1,5 weeks for 4diac IDE
would have been a perfect fit for the Github workflow.

So in summary of my long mail given all the facts I'm currently in slight favor of moving to Github. 

But I think it is also a good idea if we still wait a bit. I would like to learn a bit more from the experiences of the Eclipse Platform team, what the next
EGit release brings, and also from my work on GEF Classic. 

Cheers,
Alois



On Tue, 2022-04-12 at 08:59 +0800, zhaoxin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi, everyone
> 
> Please allow me share some numbers and links
> 
> First, a letter from Denis Roy. 
> https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/denis-roy/moving-eclipse-projects-github-and-gitlab
> We can see the initiatives for eclipse projects to move from Denis is to adapt to the young developers. 
> 
> Second, there are already 219 projects(Eclipse Titan contributed 143) transferred to GitLab (https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse?page=1). As there is no total project number and developers from webpage so I counted by myself. At the same time, there are 459 repos under eclipse org in GitHub(https://github.com/eclipse). 
> 
> Third, let's see the popular projects on both github and gitlab. In github, the most popular project of Eclipse(https://github.com/eclipse/deeplearning4j) already get 12.4K and 4.9k forks. While in gitlab (you can see the project with most stars in mobile webpage), the most popular project of Eclipse(Eclipse Foundation /Help desk) get 12 stars. 
> 
> My thinking is that:
> * we move to the platform not because it is easier to move
> * we move to the platform because the platform is the most popular one in the foreseeable future so that we open the door kindly to more and more new developers. 
> 
> My 2 cents on the point. 😊
> 
> Regards
> Tibalt
> 
> 
> 
> -----邮件原件-----
> 发件人: 4diac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx <4diac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> 代表 
> J?rg Walter
> 发送时间: 2022年4月8日 21:00
> 收件人: 4diac-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> 主题: Re: [4diac-dev] 回复: Foundation Code and Issue services reminder
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> On 2022-03-23 10:16, Melik-Merkumians@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Locating the source code on Github does not ensure more contributions.
> > Same holds true for Sourceforge, which was THE BIG THING long before
> > GitHub
> > 
> > I have a different project there, so I have some experience in that 😃
> > 
> > GitHub and GitLab offer a quite similar set of features, but using
> > dedicated Eclipse infrastructure will most likely make the work of
> > contributors and project lead easier, than also dealing with a third
> > involved party (GitHub/Microsoft) in case of troubles.
> 
> I agree with this, I would prefer Gitlab as well. Working with multiple 
> private instances of Gitlab, I don't see any omissions compared to Github 
> feature-wise.
> 
> The one convenience feature missing would be easier forking, and automatic 
> tracking of Github forks. I don't think that this is enough to justify 
> introducing an additional dependency on an external party.
> 
> Regards,
> --
> Dr.-Ing. Jörg Walter
> Gruppenleiter | Group Manager
> Distributed Computation and Communication
> 
> OFFIS e.V. - Institut für Informatik
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