Git/Conversion/Timeline

December 2011

• Preliminary test conversions early in month  Done, December 5ish
• Git workflow architecture review  Done, December 19
• Agree on implementation strategies regarding remaining development process questions, e.g. how to handle multi-repo commits  Done as of 1 Feb

January 2012

• CI tests and linting get run when a developer chooses to push to the stage between their branch and the mainline branch (see Ideal Workflow Document and Git-review) (still in progess as of 9 March -- Antoine is working on this. right now, only happens on the master)

February 2012

• Finish code review on trunk (progress at Code Review stats and MediaWiki 1.19/Revision report) Code review backlog went back up at the end of the month.
• Cut 1.19 release branch -  Done, Branched at r110996 on 9th February, 2012
• Ask people to stop creating new extensions in Subversion now -  Done, 11 Feb
• Communicate to larger community about migration
  • techblog post -  Done, 15 February 2012
• Make Gerrit behave like we want it to -- TODO [in progress, see March]
  • work on permissions  Done as of March 9th
  • work on hooks -  Done as of March 30th
• Training documentation and interactive training
  • Update Git/Workflow  Done
  • Video training. Set up a test repo, tell 3 people to submit patches simultaneously, walk them through that, then walk them through reviewing it  Done

March 2012

(Chad Horohoe unavailable March 10th-19th; Antoine Musso is his backup.)

• Finish up specific Git management scripts / changes
  • to support WMF workflow  Done
    • stage git-based tree on fenari  Done
    • update documentation  Done
  • i18n updates Bug 34137  Done This is nearly complete by March 30th. l10n updates can be pushed from translatewiki, finishing the auto-approval process.
    • Automate the translators' process as much as possible--it currently takes about 20mins/day for Raymond to do and that's a huge timesink. Chad to follow up. This has to be ready before ANY migration of core to git starts.
• MediaWiki 1.19RC1 release from Subversion. [Week of 5 March]  Done
  • Code review stats goal by end-of-week: 20 new on phase3, 100 new on phase3+extensions WMF deploys.  Done (late)
• 2 weeks before migration of MediaWiki core, start communicating about cutover date -- give date & links to all the documentation with the 3 most frequently asked questions [Week of 5 March]
  • wikitech-l, mediawiki-l [ongoing]
  • add !gitconversion to mw-bot  Done
• Keep Extension:ExtensionDistributor working. See bugzilla:27812. [In progress - Sam]
• MediaWiki 1.19.0 release from Subversion Git. [Week of 12 March]
  • MediaWiki 1.19.0beta2 release from git  Done March 22nd.
  • Code review stats goal by end-of-week: as close to zero as possible in phase3+extensions WMF deploys.  Done
• Mass-create Gerrit accounts from the SVN users whose USERINFO has an email address in it, and tell them via wikitech-l that they should just go to the password reset page on labsconsole to start logging in. [Ryan, March 12th]  Done
• Make Gerrit behave like we want it to -- [[labsconsole:Gerrit bugs that matter|TODO] (better TODO to come)
  • Making permissions right  Done
    • Allow anyone to create a gerrit account without needing human intervention from a gatekeeper [in discussion]
  • Making hooks correct  Done
• Documentation and training
  • Chad to update the code review guides, with help from Guillaume, before the migration of core. This will include:
    • docs on how current SVN committers can link their LDAP accounts, get passwords put on them, and thus get gerrit accounts (currently on labs, need improvement)
    • Create a page where people can request Gerrit accounts [Sumana, March 13th]:  Done labsconsole:Help talk:Access
    • procedure for adding and removing people from gerrit project owner groups, including for WMF deployment branch and WMF master  Done When/how we'll add, remove people from Gerrit project owner groups, Git/Gerrit project ownership
• Git migration -- core & extensions [scheduled for Wednesday, March 21]  Done
  • Make trunk/phase3 & trunk/extensions read-only  Done
• do deauth of SVN as a pre-commit hook to output an informative error message in case someone tries to commit to MW core -- "Subversion is dead, we have moved to git, read Git/Conversion"
  • pre-commit hooks are in puppet, when someone does this (probably Chad)
  • Right now it's a hard de-auth in authz
• Get native packages on Windows and Mac for git-review since it's so much easier and better than the manual commit messages hook process. See bugzilla:35145. N Not done

April 2012 + mysterious future

• Git migration -- ANYTHING ELSE
  • Make paths read-only on case-by-case basis.
  • Ongoing, slow process.
  • change links on mediawiki.org
    • Developer Hub
    • How to become a MediaWiki hacker  Done
    • Commit access  Done
    • Writing an extension for deployment  Done
  • More documentation updating. Ask Guillaume for help.
    • Code review page is a high priority.
    • get out-of-date git template & stick it on every page that mentions Subversion, including Subversion
• Possibly 1.20wmf1 (first mini deployment untethered to release schedule, first of many...1.20wmf2, 1.20wmf3, etc) from git.  Done
• Move towards git-based development and release process  Done
• First deployment from git mainline development branch  Done
• Move towards continuous integration via git, goalpost: weekly deployment
  • Jenkins (QUnit/PHPUnit tests) on git branches
  • bugzilla:34141
• MediaWiki 1.20, first deployment and release from git mainline development branch [Targeted for October currently]
• Unsorted "blockers"

June - July 2012

Evaluation of Git/Gerrit workflow and consideration of alternative tools/workflows.

Goal: Determine whether we need to undertake a significant round of Git/Gerrit improvements, or whether there are major deficiencies in the Git/Gerrit workflow that would justify switching to a different review tool/process.

Alternative open source review tools:

• ReviewBoard (example use by Khan Academy)
• Phabricator (developed initially by Facebook and now community-maintained, example use by Phabricator project ; see also Phabricator)
• Gitorious (developed by Gitorious AS and used to host Gitorious.org; has cross-repo merge request functionality similar to GitHub's pull request feature; example merge request list for StatusNet).
• GitLab (developed by ???, positions itself as open source alternative to GitHub and seems to target a similar feature set -- a bit more active than Gitorious, but does not seem to self-host yet; code on GitHub. Ruby on Rails with a dependency on Gitolite, which is written in Perl :-)

Things about Gerrit we like:

• We've got core unit tests running prior to any human review
• We have (imperfect) e-mail notification about changes
• We can push changes to a specific reviewer
• Patch sets allow gradual improvement of a change prior to merge
• Frequent releases of Gerrit itself and active dev community

Things about Gerrit we dislike:

• Gerrit bugs that matter

Workflows to consider:

• Short-lived bug/feature branches (e.g. "bug/36987")
• Long-lived feature branches (e.g. Wikidata)
• Well-maintained, regularly pushed extensions (e.g. MobileFrontend)
• Cross-project maintenance and development (e.g. i18n/l10n updates and fixes)
• Security-sensitive or access-restricted code (e.g. ops production changes)
• Complex third party extension development without significant WMF implications (e.g. Semantic MediaWiki)