Re: GitLab update: Moving to the next step

[Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org>]

I've been rewriting this email again and again to try not to be too 
impolitic... and I don't think I've succeeded, but I want to try to 
express the importance to me of some of the missing issue tracker 
features.

On 12/07/2017 12:07 PM, Carlos Soriano wrote:
> Said that, add your comments about specific improvements to issue #8
> too in a new comment so we can track them.

It looks like everything I care about is actually already tracked there 
in issue #8. (Except that the quote button needs to work like 'r'... 
good to know about the 'r' shortcut, I can live with that.) Looking over 
#8, I think duplicate issues, canned replies, and dependencies between 
issues should all be considered blockers to issue tracker migration.

I assume I don't need to explain why tracking duplicate issues is 
important. Just look at the state of the closed issues in 
gnome-calendar's issue tracker right now.

I use a long canned reply to close probably half the bugs I receive 
("here is how you report a WebKit bug..."), and bug management would be 
extremely frustrating without it. I could keep it in a text file and 
copy/paste for a couple months, as long as upstream has promised the 
feature is on the way. But I really would rather stay on Bugzilla 
forever rather than give up canned replies forever. I am going to be 
thinking "I hate GitLab" every other time I close a bug... we don't want 
that.

And I would also insist on a schedule for open sourcing dependencies 
between issues. That such an important feature is being kept closed 
source indicates we are going to have further problems collaborating 
with upstream down the road. We should be prepared to stay with Bugzilla 
indefinitely if GitLab remains unwilling to open source basic issue 
tracker functionality.

The big picture that I see is that GitLab has some cool features, and 
some people really want merge requests... I don't really care either 
way, but OK, fine by me. But I spend a *lot* of time working with 
Bugzilla, and losing basic issue tracking features is going to make my 
job as a GNOME maintainer harder. So when it comes time for all the 
remaining projects to move to GitLab, if the above deficiencies are not 
resolved, then I hope that we'll be allowed to turn off GitLab's issue 
tracker and stick with Bugzilla. Maybe it would be better to make that 
the default transition, in fact.

Michael