Wayne,
Apologies for the tardy reply on this one but I did want to get back to you. There are three items you brought up…
Eclipse BIRT Git repository – For convenience, we had been using a separate Git repository and automatically syncing that with the Eclipse BIRT Git repository on a frequent basis. The goal has always been to ensure that the Eclipse BIRT Git repository was completely up to date and the community had the latest code. When the new CLA process was introduced, our sync process stopped working. Going forward, we decided that we would do check-ins directly to the Eclipse BIRT Git repository. That is our current process. The Bugzilla bugs that are marked as resolved with code changes that are not in Git are ones that got caught in the transition between the sync not working and the revised process. We are reviewing these and will get them sorted out.
References to internal tracking numbers – As you note, this was something discussed a while back. These are Eclipse BIRT issues found during the testing of our commercial products that get fixed in the open source code base. Sometimes references to the internal issue numbers show up in the comments – we have raised this with our team and will continue to work to avoid this. I also note that the Bugzillas logged against BIRT since June 1 include some logged by IBM and include references to what looks like some IBM tracking numbers – I have added comments to all those Bugzilla entries asking that the submitter does not reference any IBM tracking numbers.
Committer Community stability – This is simply an indication that we have a stable committer community. Of course, we would welcome new committers – and I am interested to see from your email that there are some folks interested. Would be great to hear more.
Paul.
From: birt-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birt-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Wayne Beaton
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 6:50 PM
To: BIRT PMC communications (including coordination, announcements, and Group discussions)
Subject: [birt-pmc] The BIRT Git repository, issue tracking, and committers
Greetings BIRT PMC.
AFAICT, the BIRT project's Git repository has no new commits for a full month. 17 bugs [1] have changed status to RESOLVED in that period of time (which indicates that there must certainly have been some corresponding commit activity). We had previously discussed having the BIRT committers work directly against the open source repository. How is that progressing?
As we have previously discussed, the distributed nature of Git makes it very natural for development to occur in a clone. But the eclipse.org repository needs to be kept current.
Almost all of the commits contain an internal bug tracking number. AFAICT, only one commit in the month of June contains a reference to Bugzilla.
We previously discussed the separate issue tracker [2]. After some thought, I don't believe that it is appropriate for these issue tracker numbers to appear in the open source project's log. At best, they are meaningless to a potential contributor or adopter; at worst, they are an indicator to a potential contributor or adopter that the project is not open.
I don't believe that creating a Bugzilla record for every commit makes any sense. But I have to believe that at least some of these commits have conversations behind them that are not being captured in a transparent manner.
As we have previously discussed, it's difficult for contributors to participate in the project when it appears to be in development behind a corporate firewall.
I've also noticed that the BIRT project has added only two committers in the last four years (only one in the last three years). I find this odd. How is it that the project has had basically no turnover?
Wayne
[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?list_id=6312385&classification=BIRT&chfieldto=Now&query_format=advanced&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2013-06-18&chfieldvalue=RESOLVED
[2] http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/birt-pmc/msg00479.html
