Re: [OE-core] Yocto Project Status 11 Feb. 2025 (WW07)

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, 2025-02-11 at 19:42 +0100, Alexander Kanavin via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 at 16:57, Stephen Jolley via
> lists.openembedded.org
> <sjolley.yp.pm=gmail.com@lists.openembedded.org> wrote:
> > We’d like to request help to process the open github pull requests for openembedded-core and bitbake:
> > 
> > https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/pulls
> > 
> > https://github.com/openembedded/bitbake/pulls
> > 
> > Having these open doesn’t look good for the projects and we can’t disable them, some have been open for a long time. We did already clean up the poky pull requests.
> 
> I'm sorry but I have to say a couple of unpleasant things. Here goes.
> 
> The only processing I would be willing to do is mass-closing these
> pull requests with a polite note to submit them according to the
> official process. Otherwise this tacitly admits github as a valid way
> to contribute, and we're not ready for that, and possible will never
> be.

There are potentially useful bug reports and fixes buried in there and
I am reluctant to turn people away so I'd prefer to not mass close.

> While we're at it, how were these repositories created in the first
> place, and what was the plan for the pull requests they would attract?
> Should we delete these repositories now?

The repositories were added to try and share bandwidth costs, give
people easier mirrors and various other justifications. I warned
strongly about the pull request problems at the time, I was told it
would get handled and people would help and I was over reacting. Some
of the people who made those offers aren't active with the project any
more, other things just drifted with time. At one point I ended up
having to add those mirrors to my own push scripts and maintain them
because nobody else was willing and we had complaints they were not up
to date.

You used to be able to disable pull requests for six month periods, it
looks like you can no longer do that and it was a pain having to try
and remember anyway.

The bandwidth/mirror/backup benefits are valid and I'd be reluctant to
delete them as some people can only discover things through github too.
Google indexing doesn't work well with our own server.

So I guess I made my own peace with their existence. I know touching
them will make it look more like a condoned submission method but I
really don't see many good options here. Removing them is a simple easy
option but life sometimes isn't easy/simple.

Cheers,

Richard