Sounds like Christoph wants an issue tracker that is integrated with the version control system. GitHub just happens to be one of the platforms to offer this (next to Bitbucket, and Gitlab, and Jira, and what not).
If I remember correctly, that is one of the reasons why Pharo has moved to Git and GitHub: because they did not want to reinvent/reimplement these tools.
There already is https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/ and the squeak-app repository over there (through Travis CI) is what sends us the smalltalkCI reports for Trunk. Maybe we could use another repository there as an issue tracker and subscribe issue/pull request comments to squeak-dev in the same manner as the CI. (I don't suppose that the Mantis is still frequently used or would send email to the list, correct?) Now since Squeak does not switch to Git (given the feelings of several prominent people here towards Git), what remains to be solved is the integration with the version control system.
Maybe we have to build the proper Monticello frontend to Git repositories after all... despite enjoying the non-Monticello tools such as the Git Browser in and around HPI. I don't suppose anyone will be able to go the other way around and write, maintain, and operate the custom Monticello issue tracker platform in their free time.
Kind regards, Jakob
Christoph Thiede wrote
I will give a short case study and tell you how I think it probably could be performed more efficiently using the GitHub workflow:
- I'm proposing a new extension to some Squeak component, let's say a
menu for the HelpBrowser. To do this, I upload a new version to the inbox (Package-ct.2 based on Package-xyz.1). 2) Some kind person is giving me some feedback on the proposal so I am reworking it. To share the new version with the community, I have two options: A. Upload a new inbox version (Package-ct.3) that depends on Package-ct.2 or B. upload a new inbox version that contains a copy of all changes of Package-ct.2, too, that is based on Package-xyz.1 again, and that explains that Package-ct.2 can moved into the treated inbox now. Usually, I choose option B because it makes it easier to read the complete diff of my proposal compared to the trunk (but let's see step 3 for this decision). In every case, I need to leave a note referring to Package-ct.2. 3) Some kind person would like to clean up the inbox, including reviewing and eventually merging of my proposal, but where should they find all relevant information? Regarding to Package-ct.2, the Monticello Browser does not give you any hint that it is stale and should be moved into the treated inbox (provided that I chose option B in step 2) because you cannot see the discussion from the mailing list there. The mail-archive thread about Package-ct.2, too, does not contain any reference to Package-ct.3 (unless I'm sending another piece of noise manually). On the other hand, if I chose option 2.A, you cannot review Package-ct.3 standalone neither in the Monticello Browser nor in the mailing thread. And things get more complicated if just another review is left on the proposal before it can be merged ... Of course, as I am not a merging person, I cannot tell whether step 3 exactly describes your workflow as a merger, but I am facing very similar issues when trying to get an overview of my own contribution. And also, we had several small incidents in the past when something was merged that actually should have been improved before (just for example, Regex-Core-ct.56).
So how could this look differently when applying the GitHub workflow?
- For the initial proposal, I'm opening a new Pull Request to merge
"helpbrowser-menu" into "trunk" with a single commit commit-a. 2) To react on the kind person's feedback, I add another commit commit-b to this branch. GitHub, the GitBrowser, and every other git client will automatically display the connection between both commits, and because commit-a is no longer a head commit, it will not be considered as a complete feature by anybody any longer. 3) Every subsequent feedback can be left directly to the Pull Request thread (which can be easily synchronized with the mailing list using a bot similar to the OpenSmalltalk-VM-Bot) and be resolved by just another commit to this branch. All version information is kept at one single place. *) As a bonus, GitHub offers a bunch of useful features that make it easier to overview and organize all contributions. For example, we can automatically run the CI for every Pull Request (which I'm sure would help us to introduce a smaller number of bugs into the Trunk/master); issue/PR references are automatically displayed on both ends of a link; people can be assigned to certain PRs; labels can be used to mark a PR as draft, fix, enhancement, review, etc. and much more ... Also, there is already an existing project to integrate GitHub conversations into Squeak, see SqueakIssueIntegration. *) Another plus could be organizing all packages in one repository to get rid of changesets sent to the list which I find truly unhandy as they are not really designed for versioning.
-- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Squeak-Dev-f45488.html