Re: Migrating to the gitlab issue tracker

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 29 Oct 2020 14:04:04 -0400
John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 10/29/20 12:41 PM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> > On Thu, 29 Oct 2020 12:01:27 -0400
> > John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> wrote:
> >   
> >> If you're in the CC list, it's because you are listed in MAINTAINERS.  
> > 
> > <cleared the cc: list except for qemu-devel :)>
> >   
> >>
> >> Paolo's QEMU keynote this morning mentioned the possible use of the
> >> Gitlab issue tracker instead of using Launchpad.
> >>
> >> I'm quite fond of the gitlab issue tracker, I think it works quite well
> >> and it has pretty good and uncomplicated API access to it in order to
> >> customize your workflow if you'd really like to.
> >>
> >> In experimenting with my mirror on gitlab though, I was unable to find a
> >> way to configure it to send issue tracker notifications to the email
> >> list. A move to gitlab would likely mean, then:
> >>
> >> 1. The cessation of (automatic) issue tracker mails to the list
> >> 2. The loss of the ability to update the issue tracker by replying to
> >> said emails
> >> 3. Anyone listed in MAINTAINERS would be expected to have a gitlab
> >> account in order to interact with the issue tracker.  
> > 
> > The gitlab issue tracker is almost certainly is an improvement over
> > launchpad (and I do have a gitlab account); but not being able to
> > interact via email is at least annoying. I expect that not only
> > maintainers will want to interact with bug reports?
> >   
> 
> Nothing stopping reviewers or contributors from signing up and 
> subscribing to labels or issues they care about... It will just be more 
> opaque to the ebb and flow of the list.
> 
> There are still perhaps things we could do; a bot that generates weekly 
> bug report summaries might be a solution.

That might be useful. TBH, I'm not sure how many random people that are
not either the reporter or a maintainer anyway typically interact with
launchpad bugs, so requiring a gitlab account might not be that bad on
the whole (especially since people can still write an email to the
list).

> 
> >>
> >> However, once you have a gitlab account, you DO gain the ability to
> >> receive emails for issues; possibly only those tagged with labels that
> >> you cared about -- giving a nice filtering mechanism to receive only
> >> bugs you care about.
> >>
> >> Gitlab also does support individual accounts updating issues using a
> >> generated personalized email address, so if the email workflow is
> >> crucial to you, it is still available.  
> > 
> > You mean that I can update via email, provided it's an address
> > associated with my account?
> >   
> 
> https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu
> 
> Click the "bell" icon, choose "custom", and you can subscribe to issues 
> project-wide if you'd like. (Reopen, New, Closed, Reassigned).
> 
> I started experimenting with using the gitlab issue tracker for my 
> Python library project, I'll use it as an example here:

[nice instructions stripped]

Thanks, that is helpful; I'll play with it a bit when I find some time.