Re: Testing Setup - More Tests and Automation?

[Dodji Seketeli <dodji@seketeli.org>]

Hello Vanessa,

v via Libabigail <libabigail@sourceware.org> a écrit:

[...]

First of all, let me say that for what it's worth, I support your effort
of building a stronger community at 1000%, at very least.

Now, my take is that, in a very pragmatic way, we just need to figure
out a way to get "there".

[...]

> I understand the desire to not use proprietary software, but if you needed
> to move the setup elsewhere that's not hard to do! Modern software
> developers use GitHub, and all major companies (including RedHat) grow
> strong communities of developers on there. Podman is a good example:
> https://github.com/containers/podman. Git is git, so you could develop on
> GitHub and keep a backup on sourceware, and have an automated workflow to
> do that. In other words, there are ways to have your cake and eat it too.
> Let's take a look at Libabigail. From Ben's contributor graph:
> https://github.com/woodard/libabigail/graphs/contributors
>
> Or from git:
>
>   1835  Dodji Seketeli <dodji@redhat.com>
>    144  Giuliano Procida <gprocida@google.com>
>    135  Matthias Maennich <maennich@google.com>
>     35  Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz@redhat.com>
>     33  Dodji Seketeli <dodji@seketeli.org>
>     19  Chenxiong Qi <cqi@redhat.com>
>     19  Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>
>     19  Ondrej Oprala <ooprala@redhat.com>
>     15  Sinny Kumari <sinny@redhat.com>
>     13  Thomas Schwinge <thomas@codesourcery.com>
>     11  Ondrej Oprala <ondrej.oprala@gmail.com>
>      9  Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@inai.de>
>      8  Guillermo E. Martinez <guillermo.e.martinez@oracle.com>
>      8  tangmeng <tangmeng@uniontech.com>
>      7  Ben Woodard <woodard@redhat.com>
>      7  Jonathan Wakely <jwakely@redhat.com>
>      7  Jose E. Marchesi <jose.marchesi@oracle.com>
>      5  Mark Wielaard <mjw@redhat.com>
>      4  Sinny Kumari <skumari@redhat.com>
>      4  maennich@google.com <maennich@google.com>
>      2  Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org>
>      1  David Cantrell <dcantrell@redhat.com>
>      1  David Seifert <soap@gentoo.org>
>      1  Dodji <dodji@ks305400.kimsufi.com>
>      1  George Rawlinson <grawlinson@archlinux.org>
>      1  Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org>
>      1  Randy MacLeod <Randy.MacLeod@windriver.com>
>      1  Roland McGrath <roland@hack.frob.com>
>      1  Slava Barinov <v.barinov@samsung.com>
>      1  Vanessa Sochat <sochat1@llnl.gov>
>      1  Xiao Jia <xiaoj@google.com>
>
> You have *eighteen* contributors with over 5 commits in a project that is 8
> years old, and that includes repeated individuals using different
> alias/email. Out of those 18, it looks like there are maybe 3 that have
> contributed meaningfully (and recently), and talking with Ben (and seeing
> number of commits), I get a sense that the main developer is Dodji and he
> is overwhelmed. So (to me) for a library that is as important as
> libabigail, this is problematic. The bus factor is really high. Compare
> that to Podman https://github.com/containers/podman/graphs/contributors,
> which is also a niche technology / area of work, and the project has only
> been around since late 2017 (and I don't know when it went up on GitHub
> from perhaps being private at RedHat) and it has almost 400 contributors
> (just over 100 with >= 5 commits) and many others that haven't contributed
> directly to the code (myself included) but have contributed via issues and
> other interaction.
>
> So (to me) this is a problem that needs to be solved, and I don't think
> keeping things the way that they are is that solution, regardless of how
> you innovate a bit with adding automation. The cost of not changing your
> current setup is very high, and I worry about the future of libabigail. As
> a developer I want to contribute and champion the work, but in its current
> state I find the project feels very closed and not trying bring me in. The
> students I spoke to at CU Boulder were inspired, but they will stop their
> exploration when they realize it's not easy to ask questions or for help.
> In other words, you are 100% losing out in terms of new contributors and
> developers by not using these modern practices and services.  That is of
> course your choice (and I respect the choices you make generally) but I
> strongly suggest you have a conversation with your team about this issue,
> and action you can take to address it. I really have enjoyed using
> libabigail and I think it can be better in many ways, not just the library
> itself but supported tools, automation, and branding, and this burden
> cannot just be on one or two developers.
>
> Thank you for engaging with me in this conversation, and fingers crossed
> this message is not rejected for too many links, etc. !

What else can I say, really :-)  This is so eloquently put.  There is
not much I can add to this.

Thank you so much and let's get there together.

Cheers,

-- 
		Dodji