[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Suggestion for a Nicer Integration with GitHub

[Lynne]

Aug 14, 2021, 02:42 by rsbultje at gmail.com:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 4:51 AM Nicolas George <george at nsup.org> wrote:
>
>> Paul Buxton (12021-08-12):
>> > From the point of view of someone who is currently developing a filter
>> for
>> > ffmpeg and will be submitting a patch to the list for the first time, I
>> > think this is a great idea.Whilst following simple instructions to
>> prepare
>> > and submit a patch should't be outside the ability of anyone who is
>> capable
>> > of contributing. Using something like github allows a more automated
>> > workflow that can make the process smoother and even make lives easier
>> for
>> > the maintainers as it is possible for the automations to catch issues
>> > before they get sent on to you.
>>
>> Have you wondered why these periodical threads "we/you should make
>> FFmpeg more attractive" usually end up a discussion between disgruntled
>> newbies congratulating each other for their great ideas, with only the
>> occasional bored experienced developer stepping in?
>>
>
> Experienced dev speaking here: I absolutely 100% disagree with this
> statement. I would be much happier to actively contribute to FFmpeg if it
> used gitlab/hub. I find this mailinglist environment beyond horrendous. I
> can't understand why anyone would be OK with our current approach. I only
> grudgingly use it when I need to because I'm assuming I'm the minority and
> I'm willing to accept the majority consensus, but not because I support it
> or think it's a good idea.
>

You're not the minority. The last week we've had such unorganized
patchdumps, it's impossible to read all of them. A lot of patches go
rotting because they haven't received enough attention, and patchwork
doesn't integrate perfectly to highlight them.
We've discussed this somewhat on IRC, and there, pretty much everyone
received the idea to move well. But out here on the ML (not exactly a
neutral ground, discussing its replacement on itself), it's a different
story.

Hosting your own mail address is pretty futile nowadays. It'll be useless
for anything but the ML, unless you take it seriously, admin it properly,
make sure your IP address has a clean history, keep up with DKIM,
DMARC, and other new extensions which unless you implement, you
can't be sure your messages won't go to spam, or outright deleted.
Moreover, even if you pay for someone else to do it for you, it's not
cheap, it's usually garbage (I know mine is, that's why I have to attach
patches instead of use git send-email), and due to the sheer amount
of noise, it's hard to keep up with what needs attention other than
read *everything* to not miss something.

Gitlab plain sucks. It's a very buggy, crappy piece of non-free/freemium
software, made by a company that fully sold out to investors, turned
downright evil and fully embraced the enterprise. It takes hours to open
patch diffs for small patchsets, it frequently just plainly errors out
client-side, it requires constat daily administration to remove spam
accounts, and some projects just plainly close registrations and ask that
you ask on IRC to get an account so you can file bugs/send patches.

The situation is far from perfect. In my opinion, mirroring will just
result in such an incredible amount of noise on the ML, the ML
will turn useless anyway, and due to needing to maintain both,
one will fall out of favour with developers and will break, while
limiting the integration for the other.

I'd rather move to either a self-hosted Gitea or Gogs instance,
or failing that, Github. IMO Gitea is pretty good and fast. As bad
as that could be, it'll be better than what we have now or could have
with Gitlab.