Re: cfbot update: Using GitHub for patch review

On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 1:10 AM Ashutosh Bapat
<ashutosh(dot)bapat(dot)oss(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I need to sign in to github to add my review comments. So those who do not have a github account can not use it for review. But I don't think that can be fixed. We need a way to know who left review comments.

I don't think Jelte was talking about moving review discussion to
Github, just providing a link to *view* the patches there. Now I'm
wondering if there is a way to disable comments on commits in the
postgresql-cfbot GH account. I guess they'd be lost after 48 hours
anyway when the branch gets force-pushed and commit hash changes? I
don't want people to start posting comments there that no one is
looking at.

> There was some discussion at pgconf.dev about using gitlab instead of github. How easy is it to use gitlab if we decide to go that way?

cfbot could certainly be configured to push (ie mirror) the same
branches to gitlab too (I don't have much experience with Gitlab, but
if it's just a matter of registering an account + ssh key, adding it
as a remote and pushing...). Then there could be [View on Github]
[View on Gitlab] buttons, if people think that's useful (note "View",
not "Review"!). The Cirrus CI system is currently only capable of
testing stuff pushed to Github, though, so cfbot would continue to
push stuff there.

If memory servers, Cirrus used to say that they were planning to add
support for testing code in public Gitlab next, but now their FAQ says
their next public git host will be Bit Bucket:
https://cirrus-ci.org/faq/#only-github-support

Given that cfbot is currently only using Github because we have to to
reach Cirrus CI, not because we actually want Github features like
issue tracking or pull requests with review discussion, it hardly
matters if it's Github, Gitlab or any other public git host. And if
we eventually decide to move our whole workflow to one of those
systems and shut down the CF app, then cfbot will be retired, and
you'll just create PRs on that system. But so far, we continue to
prefer the CF app + email.

The reason we liked Cirrus so much despite the existence of many other
CI systems including the ones build into GH, GL, etc and many 3rd
party ones, was because it was the only provider that allowed enough
compute minutes for our needs, supported lots of operating systems,
and had public links to log files suitable for sharing on out mailing
list or cfbot's web interface (if you click to see the log, it doesn't
say "Rol up roll up, welcome to Foo Corporation, get your tickets
here!"). I still don't know of any other CI system that would be as
good for us, other than building our own. I would say it's been a
very good choice so far. The original cfbot goal was "feed the
mailing list to a CI system", with Github just a necessary part of the
plumbing. It is a nice way to view patches though.