[GHC DevOps Group] State of CI

[Andres Löh]

Hi everyone.

I'm not sure if the Microsoft acquisition of github is really all that
relevant. Time will show if it has any impact (positive or negative or
whatever). In any case, it should probably not be a reason for us / GHC
to make any decision on using Github more or less based on that right
now. Given that, it seems the arguments for/against moving everything
(or at least more of the development process) to Github remain largely
as they have been before.

The Phabricator / Phacility change of business model was news to me, but
after talking to Ben and Austin a bit more, it also seems like there's
no short-term detrimental effect to the change. Also, it seems the
change has actually already occurred quite some time ago, and hasn't
signficantly impacted GHC development up until now. So while we should
perhaps monitor this, it seems the arguments for/against Phabricator are
also mostly as before.

I haven't been following all the discussions in as much detail as I
perhaps should have, but is there currently anything that prevents us
from reaching our CI goals while continuing to use Phabricator? If not,
I suggest we continue trying that (which in my perception used to be
the plan; if not, please correct me).

Cheers,
  Andres

On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 10:21:34AM +0200, Boespflug, Mathieu wrote:
> Hi Gershom,
> 
> On 6 June 2018 at 03:23, Gershom B <gershomb at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:51 PM, Simon Peyton Jones
> > <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
> > > 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
> >
> > For what it's worth, the latter is definitely not happening. [...]
> > Some metrics have shown that there has been a
> > marked increase in imports of github accounts to gitlab in the past
> > day or so.
> 
> I assume you're referring to this:
> https://twitter.com/gitlab/status/1004143715844124673. I think it's
> premature to draw any inference from a single metric, let alone
> "definite" ones. Adoption is the result of the *net* inflow of users
> (new users minus lost users) integrated over time. With any
> substantial change, there are always going to be some disgruntled
> users, and others hedging their bets. That says little about the
> influx (or lack thereof) of new users and about the longer term trend.
> 
> > Certainly the expectation is that microsoft will evolve github in
> > _some_ direction under its management, and this uncertainty enough is
> > sufficient to drive some migration -- and should give pause to GHC
> > plans as well -- it doesn't seem like a savvy move to cut over to
> > something that could well be a moving target until some dust settles.
> 
> I understand that some people out there are concerned about the GitHub
> acquisition. But at this point in the maturity of the infrastructure,
> there are more pressing concerns than what will Microsoft do.
> 
> * As seen here, https://circleci.com/gh/ghc/ghc, master is currently
> red on everything but x86_64-linux (sans LLVM, sans Hadrian).
> * This means that starting from a stock Debian Jessie, we can't get
> validate to pass on stock virtualized infrastrure (except for one).
> * So the first order of business is to get ghc HEAD to a sufficient
> level of quality that validate passes everywhere and so that CI
> becomes useful.
> * None of this work is GitHub specific. Nor all that CircleCI or
> Appveyor specific for that matter (work is currently focused on
> improving the test suite).
> * Our GitHub lock-in factor is currently low to pretty much absent,
> and would remain low even if the review workflow becomes more
> systematically GitHub centric (it already is for some small
> contributions).
> * That's because tickets remain on Trac, and the code along with the
> entirety of its history remains in a standard Git repository, GitHub
> or not. Also because GitHub is not a CI provider, those providers we
> do use integrate with other code hosting solutions (e.g. Appveyor with
> GitLab), and the surface area of CI provider-specific code is small.
> 
> Now, this isn't to say that other options (e.g. GitLab or Bitbucket,
> for code review and/or for code hosting and/or for CI) aren't worth
> considering medium term. It's that I see no reason to stall first
> getting to a stable situation where CI is green on all "Tier 1"
> platforms on all types of hardware, nor to fear accepting even more
> contributions from GitHub users.
> 
> Best,
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-- 
Andres Löh, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com

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