Phabricator and automatic build testing

[Craig Rodrigues]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 1:12 PM, Hans Petter Selasky <hps at selasky.org>
wrote:

>
> FreeBSD does have a github mirror. Can't that be used with Phabricator, if
> some plugins require GIT?
>

Yes, the github mirror can be used.
Right now, robak@ is working on a project whereby if someone does a github
pull request
against http://github.com/freebsd/freebsd, it will open a bug in the
FreeBSD bugzilla system.

I'm waiting to see how far he gets with this, because conceivably we could
extend this
to do other things like integrate with Phabricator, and trigger automated
builds.

One disadvantage that the FreeBSD project has is that we have multiple
systems:
   Phabricator
   Bugzilla
   Jenkins
   Subversion

Each system on its own is quite good.  However if you want to integrate the
systems together to provide
more advanced workflows, we have to write code to integrate these systems.
The FreeBSD project
doesn't have too many coders who are willing and able to do this, so things
move slowly for us.

Many other open source projects have basically gone to systems where
everything is integrated.
Github is the most popular one by far.  Others like Gitlab are popular too.
There are pros and cons of using an integrated system, and relying on a
third party like Github.
However, when you use something like Github,
there are hundreds of pre-existing scripts and workflows that you can
instantly take advantage of.

I have seen these other projects move at lightening speed in comparison to
FreeBSD,
because these integrated systems are very good, and make people productive.

It will take time for FreeBSD to move in this direction, because although
we have a good project,
we are slow moving and resistant to change in many ways.
--
Craig