Git infrastructure launch
The past month or so, the sysadmin team has been busy with the preparations for the launch of our own git infrastructure. But with the setup of git infrastructure, we also have taken the opportunity to launch a couple of new services:
Gosa
The Gosa system is a webinterface which makes it possible to maintain your personal data, like name and e-mail. A bit similar to the -soon deprecated- kde-common/accounts file. This system can also be used to maintain your personal ssh-keys that you want to use for repository access.
SSI
Gosa will also be used as base for a Single Sign In system. In the past few years we have launched several services that require a seperate login and password (techbase & friends, reviewboard, kde-developers, etc). We don’t want that in the future. The username and password that you use for Gosa, can also be used for reviewboard and other new services in the future.
Redmine
With the launch of git, we also want a per project landing page. A place where you can find all relevant information about a project, where you can browse the source code, find links to communitybase and tarballs, and where projects can also place news items. We have chosen Redmine for this task.
We have now reached a point that we have tested all the individual items and feel that it is time to let all those pieces of the puzzle fall together.
We have chosen to not go for a simulation of the big bang and launch everything at the same day, but have chosen for a step-by-step schedule with different milestones. In the end we are changing key infrastructure and we don’t want to make errors.
It also means that whenever we encounter a problem along the way, the schedule will be delayed. We will keep the page up to date as we go along.
At key moments we will also inform the kde-core-devel and kde-cvs-announce mailing lists.
You can find the schedule here! Have fun.
I’m glad to see that things are progressing. This was a bit of a bummer though:
“November 17th
After the initial flow of individual projects that have moved to git, we are open to assist in moving the KDE modules. How this part will happen is unknown and will probably not happen directly at this point in time.”
Three and a half months from now the modules won’t have been moved over, according to the roadmap. Any chance this might be expedited if someone writes the svn2git rules? In general, when do you anticipate the svn will be completely depreciated? (except for, perhaps, www and translations)
like Jason, i’m very happy to see the roadmap emerge. great work.
also like Jason, i’m bummed about the last parts of the roadmap. nothing that isn’t fixable, though, either by explaining why those decisions were made or by adjusting the roadmap.
in particular:
* when can new projects (not on gitorious or in KDE’s svn) move to git.kde.org? i’m thinking of things like the Simon speech control app. i’m guessing it could be as early as Sept 22nd, but that’s not clearly stated anywhere?
* why are the processes of migrating gitorious users and moving KDE svn projects over serialized? is it to keep the workload of creating new git repos down for the system admin team? or to keep the workload of supporting new git users down? or to let the system burn in slowly (though i can’t imagine there are git scalability issues)? is creating a new git repository something that Gosa accounts with push access not do on their own?
if it’s a work load issues, perhaps we can make people self-helping with the right documentation?
jason: the more people write svn2git rules, the faster it’ll go. :) I forget where they keep the instructions, but I’m sure someone in #kde-git knows…
Aaron, starting from September 29th we will move gitorious projects to our setup. We can also do that from Simon, in the worst case when we get swamped with requests, it has to wait until the end of October, but I’m sure we will find time for special cases.
We have selected this schedule because each steps involves different actions by sysadmin. For example closing access for password users, sounds straightforward, but i’m sure the week after we do that, we will get bug reports from developers who can’t commit anymore, despite our invitations to switch. But we need to know that, because the import into Gosa will only happen once. Each step has it’s own consequences and we really want to make it a success and not a frustrating excercise for the developers and for us. The downside is that it will take a bit longer, but considering it is augustus already, I think things will happen very fast already.
Regarding the move of the main modules. We have indicated when we will be ready for it. For the main modules, it will have consequences regarding the release team and a hell of a lot community related consequences.
Seeing the schedule in relation to the 4.6 release schedule, I think the ideal time would be to do it right after the 4.6 release or branch (say 4.7.0 will be the first kde completely developped on git), but it requires a schedule on its own and depends on if we finish our infrastructure schedule on time.
I consider this more a release-team thingy then a sysadmin thingy though. So, it would be nice if they draft a schedule and set lead that transition (although that will probably be me again :))
Congrats and thanks for all the hard work :) You guys rock!
RE: SSI (or should it be SSO (single sign-on)?), at the moment, many KDE sites allow users to use OpenID instead of having to remember yet another login pair. An SSI system mitigates needing multiple login pairs across sites, but OpenID makes sure I only need *one*, and one that can properly secure (I use browser-based client-side SSL certificates AND passwords, do you)?.
Please keep the OpenID momentum going!
SSI is something else than SSO. It just uses the same login and password, but you are not automatically logged in. We have tried really, really hard to make everything work with openid, but key systems in our infrastructure do not support openid. We will roll it out on a later date for sure, as I’m one of its biggest fans.