Re: CSS test GitHub repo strategy for TestTWF Shenzhen

On 10/3/13 7:25 AM, "Tobie Langel" <tobie@w3.org> wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Rebecca Hauck wrote:
>> > My only concern is around the CLA here. How are you planning to
>>handle that?
>> 
>> Good point. Since you're asking this question, I'll assume the CLA in
>>the repo does not cover submissions to forks? I guess I assumed that it
>>did. Or rather, I didn't think about it at all b/c I'm not a lawyer.
>
>I'm not a lawyer either, but it seems we're loosing part of the paper
>trail in the process you describe, also this happens within an GH
>organization that W3C doesn't control and which could go away.

Understood, and this is why I proposed #3, but I guess forking into itself
is not technically possible.

>
>On a branding/discoverability perspective, I'm also not keen on seeing a
>testthewebforward org pop up on GH that wouldn't also be the canonical
>location of the testtwf-website repo, web-platform-tests repo, etc. As
>moving those repos would just be a major annoyance to everyone involved,
>I'm strongly opposed to this. If you absolutely must create a new org for
>this, please tie it to the CSS WG and not to Test the Web Forward.

Fair enough. FWIW, we created the testhewebforward github user in April in
preparation for the Seattle event, where we first used GitHub. I only just
converted it to an organization so I could add more owners. I'm aiming for
this to be a repeatable process for other events and other organizers who
may not be CSSWG members, so I'm not sure a CSSWG organization is the way
to go.  Would TestTheWebForward-Events be more acceptable?

>> What do you recommend? I see a few possible options:
>> Just have people sign the Grant of License form[1]. We've been doing
>>this all along anyway.
>> Extend the CLA to cover forks (or at least just this one). More lawyers
>>= more complicated?
>
>The problem is the paper trail here, not an extension of the CLA to forks.
>> Make the forked repo under the w3c github organization. Is it even
>>possible to fork a repo into the same organization from which it
>>originated? Would it then be covered by the CLA?
>
>It's not technically possible to fork a repo under the same org afaik.
>Have you considered using a separate branch on the same repo to receive
>GH contributions and merge that branch after the event? Would the Git /
>Hg bridge support that?

I'd be in favor of a branch strategy as long as it works for the workflow
I describe. I am not able to create a branch myself and I don't know
enough about Github and support for branch-level permissions, much less
the HG-Git bridge. Peter, can you advise if this is possible?


I have to emphasize how important this is to make better.  I don't really
favor one method over another, as long as it can support the workflow I
described.

The way the css test repo is currently mirrored on Github, it's been
rather painful dealing with the PRs for the three events it's been in
place. For Seattle, it was a failure - we were never able to merge them
during the event because we had extreme difficulty getting hg-git set up
in time for the event (each attempt took 3-4 hours and there were bad
version incompatibility issues that weren't resolved for days afterward).
Tokyo was marginally better, but still not good for reasons I already
stated. And we're still behind on the Shanghai (approved) PRs. Simply put,
the current setup has turned out to create more of a bottleneck for test
contributions. Particularly at these events where we have the
extraordinary circumstance of lots of experts reviewing tests, they should
be landing right there when they're approved as they are in the WPT repo.

If you look at the commit logs of the CSS repo for the past year+, more
than half of contributors have come from TestTWF events (and almost all of
the open
PRs are such). Therefore, it's worth coming up with a solution to this
that can repeated easily by other organizers, rather than trying (and
failing at) something new at each event.

Received on Thursday, 3 October 2013 21:58:25 UTC