[GHC DevOps Group] Phacility -> Reviewable [was: Re: State of CI]

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

> Am 06.06.2018 um 06:51 schrieb Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>:
> 
> I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect that Microsoft's acquisition of Github means
> - that GitHub will be largely undisturbed culturally
> - that GitHub will have more oomph behind it, so it'll become yet
>  more the de-facto choice than it already is

I agree, Simon. Microsoft 2018 seems to have different priorities from what it used to have — that is clear just from looking at the sheer scale of open-source contributions. 

I think, the main obstacle here is perception. Especially among the Linux community, there are many people who historically distrust Microsoft. We have seen this discussion on the GHC list before, where some individuals refuse to even consider GitHub just because not every last bit of their software is open source. Alas, I predict that these people will feel validate by the acquisition.

> | That is correct. Phacility is moving to an explicitly pay-to-play model;
> | CircleCI and Appveyor both only support GitHub,
> 
> I know nothing of the nitty-gritty reality, but from what you say about Phab, it sounds to me as if the wind is blowing us toward GitHub even if it doesn’t do everything we might want.

This is my impression, too. Now, I see no problem in paying for a service when it is useful — as in we get better support for code reviews than what GitHub provides for free. However, if we are going to pay-to-play anyway, then I would strongly suggest to consider services like https://reviewable.io <https://reviewable.io/>, which integrate well with GitHub, and hence with CircleCI and Appveyor, with no extra work on our side.

In fact, I just looked at <https://reviewable.io <https://reviewable.io/>>’s <https://reviewable.io's/> pricing and for open source projects it seems to be free.

Ben & SimonM, could you please have a closer look at whether https://reviewable.io <https://reviewable.io/> addresses the issues that you have got with GitHub’s code reviews? (I notice that one point Ben has made, namely how comments at specific lines are handled by GitHub, is something that https://reviewable.io <https://reviewable.io/> explicitly claims they do much better.)

Signing up for the free option is trivial with your GitHub account and you can link the GHC org from there. We can try https://reviewable.io <https://reviewable.io/> on individual PRs without enabling it for the entire repo to get a feel for it.

I’d like to know if there is any strong reason for not replacing Phacility by Reviewable.

Thanks,
Manuel

> Simon
> 
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From: Ghc-devops-group <ghc-devops-group-bounces at haskell.org> On Behalf
> | Of Ben Gamari
> | Sent: 05 June 2018 17:30
> | To: Manuel M T Chakravarty <manuel.chakravarty at tweag.io>
> | Cc: ghc-devops-group at haskell.org
> | Subject: Re: [GHC DevOps Group] State of CI
> | 
> | Manuel M T Chakravarty <manuel.chakravarty at tweag.io> writes:
> | 
> | > Hi Ben,
> | >
> | Hi Manuel,
> | 
> | > I just wanted to touch base regarding the state of the GHC CI effort.
> | >
> | > As far as I am aware, we have CI running on both CircleCI and Appveyor
> | > (with Google generously donating the build machines). Is that right?
> | >
> | That is right. Alp and I have been steadily chipping away at the
> | remaining build issues but otherwise things seem to be working well.
> | 
> | > Do these builds also generate complete build artefacts by now? (We
> | > wanted to eventually generate everything including documentation
> | > automatically.)
> | >
> | 
> | 
> | > If I am not mistaken, we still can’t run CircleCI on Phab Diffs.
> | > Moreover, there was some noise that Phabricator might be changing
> | > their business model, which might make it less attractive for GHC (but
> | > I am not sure about the details). Is that correct?
> | >
> | That is correct. Phacility is moving to an explicitly pay-to-play model;
> | the source is available, but they aren't accepting patches and opening
> | tickets requires a support contract. This isn't the end of the world for
> | us, but it certainly makes Phabricator less attractive in the long-run.
> | However, given the recent GitHub news, I'm not sure this is a terribly
> | attractive option either.
> | 
> | All of this certainly complicates the CI story. On one hand, I've been
> | a tad reluctant to spend too much time hacking Phabricator/CircleCI
> | integration together given the Phabricator situation. On the other hand,
> | CircleCI and Appveyor both only support GitHub, so a move to, for
> | instance, GitLab doesn't really unblock us.
> | 
> | For the time being I would say we should probably continue pushing ahead
> | with Phabricator. It likely won't be too hard to get something working
> | and it will finally allow us to begin moving away from Harbormaster.
> | 
> | Cheers,
> | 
> | - Ben

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