Phabricator

Phabricator is an open source software development platform used for project management, bug reporting, and code review in an integrated fashion.

For a Wikimedia-centric overview, watch the Tech Talk The Very Basics of Phabricator. Bugzilla users are encouraged to read our Phabricator versus Bugzilla comparison.

Give it a try!

phabricator.wikimedia.org
After a favorable request for comment, we are deploying https://phabricator.wikimedia.org to replace Bugzilla, RT, Trello, Mingle, Gerrit, and gitblit. Why?
 * The volume and complexity of our software projects keeps increasing; MediaWiki and Bugzilla fall short for project management.
 * WMF teams are increasingly using Mingle and Trello, 3rd party commercial services that are alien to the Wikimedia community and principles. This is creating a divide. Wikimedia Germany is trying Scrumbugz, a one-man OSS project barely maintained.
 * Overlap, duplication, and actions falling between the cracks increase.
 * To mitigate this problem, we have created more tools to synchronize information between services (like Bingle or Gerrit notifications in Bugzilla). They need to be maintained (e.g. when one service is upgraded and its API interface has changed).
 * Contributing to Bugzilla (Perl) and Gerrit (Java) is complex for us (PHP, and Phabricator is written in PHP).
 * The current setup brings overhead and annoyance to key developers:
 * Senior developers having to use heavily Gerrit, Bugzilla, and Mingle/Trello.
 * New contributors, most of them arriving with GitHub-like expectations.

Migration timeline
Beware, the Phabricator team may change this sequence as plans evolve (although we try not to). If you need more details, you can find them at T174 - Launch Wikimedia Phabricator Day 1.
 * 1) ✅ Deployment of https://legalpad.wikimedia.org/ (project)
 * 2) ✅ Migration of data from fab.wmflabs.org to phabricator.wikimedia.org
 * 3) ✅ New test instance in Labs open to everyone, blocked by
 * 4)  phabricator.wikimedia.org open to all Wikimedia users (creation of new projects is blocked until the Bugzilla migration)  blocked by
 * 5) * Stock Phabricator applications not in use removed
 * 6) * ✅ Possibility to handle private tasks
 * 7) * Wikimedia SUL login (mediawiki.org, Wikipedia, etc) and LDAP (wikitech.wikimedia.org)
 * 8) * Wikimedia username visible in user profiles
 * 9) * Legal compliance for user-uploaded files
 * 10) * License of the content submitted
 * 11) * Terms of use
 * 12) * Using Phabricator via email
 * 13) * Reference field not editable
 * 14)  Test instance containing Bugzilla reports automatically migrated
 * , earliest 2014-10-06: RT migration (1-3 days downtime), blocked by
 * 1) * Interaction with external users via email
 * , earliest 2014-10-17: Bugzilla migration (1-3 days downtime), blocked by
 * 1) * Bugzilla to Phabricator import script
 * 2) * Community review of the Bugzilla migration test instance (one week at least, more if improvements are needed)
 * 3) * Elasticsearch
 * 4) * Automatic redirects from Bugzilla reports to Phabricator tasks
 * 5) * Wiki templates for Bugzilla pointing to Phabricator
 * 6) * Gerrit plugin to sync tasks with code reviews
 * 7) * IRC bots reporting Phabricator activity
 * 8) * How to organize projects
 * 9) * Ho to claim Bugzilla reports
 * 10) * Documentation for Bugzilla users
 * 11) * Communication plan
 * 12) * Approval from Wikimedia Foundation Engineering management
 * , expected during October: Burndown charts & migration from Scrumbugz
 * , expected before the end of 2014: Total migration from Mingle
 * , expected before the end of 2014: Total migration from Trello
 * , before 2015-03-31? Total migration from gitblit
 * , before 2015-03-31? Total migration from Gerrit
 * , before 2015-06-30? Total migration from Jenkins

Get started
There is a test instance at phab-01.wmflabs.org. Use it to learn and experiment, not for serious work.

Learn more about Phabricator versus Bugzilla. You can also watch a screencast about handling tasks/bugs.

If you have questions, check the Help and the FAQ.

Access to phabricator.wikimedia.org
Access to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org is restricted due to some pending tasks. You can request an exception if you are involved in any of the current projects. Find a Phabricator admin at and ping them directly.

Important requirements

If you are not happy with the list below, then you can wait.


 * you acknowledge that you are an early access user, that you may find some features broken, and that you will take the effort to report bugs
 * you are aware of the migration timeline and the fact that the site might be entirely down during the RT and Bugzilla migrations
 * you need to login with your wikitech.wikimedia.org account
 * you will work on real tasks, leaving any testing or learning for https://phab-01.wmflabs.org/
 * don't touch the ext_ref field
 * don't upload any files, not even for your avatar (we will delete any files uploaded accidentally)

Get involved
We are working on the migration of several developer infrastructure services to one single Phabricator instance. It's a very exciting project! We welcome your help. If you are a developer you could also give Phabricator's code a try; Phabricator is written in PHP like MediaWiki.
 * Learn to use Phabricator. Play and test in our Labs instance as much as you want.
 * You might want to watch the kick-off meeting of the Wikimedia Phabricator Day 1 project.
 * Bugzilla, RT, Trello, and Mingle users are welcome to the Phabricator project. Your help is welcome anywhere, but especially in the tasks that are blocking Day 1.
 * Git and Gerrit users are welcome to the Code Review in Phabricator project. We need help learning about the possibilities of Phabricator in this area: what is missing, what exists in a different way, what is remarkably interesting, which are the blockers that should be reported upstream?