Sysadmin report on the modernization of our infrastructure

[Ben Cooksley]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Milian Wolff <mail at milianw.de> wrote:
> On Friday 23 January 2015 15:40:40 Ben Cooksley wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 3:52 AM, Milian Wolff <mail at milianw.de> wrote:
>> > On Wednesday 21 January 2015 17:12:07 Ben Cooksley wrote:
>> >> Hi all,
>> >>
>> >> As promised in the earlier thread, i'd like to present the sysadmin
>> >> report on the state of the infrastructure surrounding our code.
>> >>
>> >> It contains a detailed summary of what is broken with our existing
>> >> systems, why change is necessary and an evaluation of the options we
>> >> considered. We have also made a proposal based on our evaluations and
>> >> the wishlist of functionality drawn up the community.
>> >>
>> >> Please find it attached - and let us know what you think. Feedback is
>> >> welcome.
>> >
>> > Another question regarding Phabricator:
>> >
>> > Currently, Chili offers a very nice tree structure of projects, which
>> > follows our KDE structure with frameworks, playground, extragear etc. pp.
>> > - nice!
>> >
>> > Can Phabricator do the same? I assumed so, from the fact that you hinted
>> > at it being able to generate the metadata XML file which is used by
>> > kdesrc-build to replicate the tree structure e.g.
>>
>> We can probably use the tag feature of Phabricator to associate
>> repositories to projects.
>> This would allow us to tag projects as #extragear #multimedia as an
>> example - giving us a different form of structure.
>> It doesn't directly support the tree structure.
>>
>> (I will add that the tree structure support in Chiliproject is part
>> sysadmin-hack, and is a big part of the upgrade problems associated
>> with it as the changes needed to support it are both highly invasive
>> and in an area which is regularly changed).
>>
>> > But https://showoff.phab.io/project/ only shows a list of projects. Same
>> > for https://showoff.phab.io/diffusion/. I tried to create a new project
>> > and a new repository, and could not figure out how to create a tree with
>> > it.
>> Projects can't contain other projects with Phabricator i'm afraid.
>
> So this means kdesrc-build will break, no? At least for those who use the
> default layout which mimicks the tree structure on projects.kde.org.

We will be putting in place other mechanisms to map
repositories/projects to the tree structure.
Because the kde_projects.xml file is expensive to generate anyway,
it'll be rebuilt by a script whenever changes have been made.

Note: the kde_projects.xml file is unique to us - everything requires
some level of custom work here to build this file.

>
> And I'd bet that tags or similar metadata can also be attached to gerrit
> repos. I hoped to see Phabricator have a clear lead here, but apparently not
> so.
>
> Bye
> --
> Milian Wolff
> mail at milianw.de
> http://milianw.de

Cheers,
Ben