Re: [Codenarc-developer] My views on making it easier for people to contribute

[Marcin E. <mar...@pr...>]

Hamlet,

I believe that there actually is a lot of benefit in migrating to github.
>From a contributor point of view I can tell that the step where you have to
send email with the patch is a PITA. Apart from it being an outdated
technique you also have to know who to send the email to. I knew that I can
send it to you but others might struggle to find appropriate addresses and
I can't easily find any info on where and how to send contributions on the
project site.

There are several other benefits I can see apart from the social one you
mentioned:
- anyone who has ever contributed to an open source project will probably
have their github stuff set up, because most of the projects are hosted on
github and will know how to create a pull request
- people don't have to wonder how to contribute - they will know that they
should simply fork the repo and submit a pull request
- with git being a distributed vcs you get the possibility to do local
commits and back them up on github in your own fork, which means you can
work on the patch on any machine (this gets even easier if we had a gradle
build with a wrapper because setting up a project is just a matter of
calling 'gradlew idea')
- you have one central place when you can comment on people's contributions
and it's easier for other developers from Codenarc team to get involved in
the discussion
- people can change their pull requests by adding your suggestions to it by
just pushing to the branch pull request is based on in their fork

As I said, I volunteer to perform the migration - someone has to simply
create an organisation and a repo on github and give my access to it for
the time of the migration. I will use git-svn, so the whole history,
branches and tags will still be there. And I definitely don't believe it's
going to take 4 hours. :)

I think that we should try to get the site plugin from gradle integrated
into to the build as well. It's there to be used and why should you change
the way you generate your documentation and do it manually if you don't
have to? Let's try to do a full migration and worry later if there actually
are any problems.

Glad to read that you see my good intentions in my suggestions. And I'm not
here to just whine about stuff - I'm eager to help. It's just you that have
to decide if you want to accept my help.

Marcin

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Hamlet DArcy <ham...@ca...>wrote:

> How does Subversion prevent Netflix employees from contributing rules back?
> Have you written custom rules that you haven't submitted back, and just
> don't want to see the hassle of messing with Subversion?
>
> Full disclosure: I'm the guy that doesn't see the benefit of Git for
> CodeNarc. I wrote up the process of pull, code, commit, pull request/patch
> for both Subversion and GitHub. Both processes had roughly the same number
> of bullet points and took roughly the same time. From a contributors
> viewpoint, I don't see any improvement.
>
> GitHub:
> * Fork
> * Git Pull
> * Write Code
> * Commit and Push
> * Pull request and type up a nice message
>
> Subversion
> * svn co https://sourceforge.subversion.com/codenarc/trunk
> * Write Code
> * svn diff > my_patch.patch
> * Attach patch to ticket or email me the patch
>
> And that assumes the contributor already has a GitHub account and has
> already navigated the steps to create keys and get an account.
>
> I *do* see a benefit of GitHub. There is a "social coding" aspect to it
> where developers can easily get recognition and kudos for the work they do.
> Much more so than just getting your name in our release notes :)
>
> If anyone feels motivated to do the work and make the switch then I guess
> we should go for it. It will have some benefit. Based on my analysis, I am
> personally not motivated to do this work. I feel like the migration would
> take about 4 hours of my time. Writing 2 new analysis rules would also take
> about 4 hours. I'm just talking about me personally, but I'm going to spend
> time on rules for the time being because it offers a better return on
> investment.
>
> As for Gradle... I see good benefits, like being able to run the tests
> against Groovy 1.8 and Groovy 2.0, automating our release more, and rolling
> the create-rule script into a Gradle task. Plus, the Gradle Wrapper is
> great. What holds us back is the Site stuff. What I would do in a Gradle
> conversion is forget about the Site plugin. I'd just take all of our HTML
> and check it into VCS. The only part that changes is the rule descriptions
> that get updated with every rule. You could just change the create-rule
> script to update an HTML page instead of a wiki markup page and be done.
>
> And finally... thanks for caring about CodeNarc. It's a special project
> for me and it means a lot to hear some voices from people who care.
>
> --
> Hamlet D'Arcy
> ham...@ca...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > +1 on prioritizing the Git/Github move. I know that keeps us from
> > doing more with CodeNarc at Netflix. Github is probably the single
> > best thing you can do with your project to get more developer use and
> > contributions. I don't see a move to Gradle buying you as much, seems
> > like a lateral change.
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Marcin Erdmann
> > <mar...@pr...> wrote:
> > > Chris,
> > >
> > > I believe migrating to git is more essential when it comes to
> > > getting people
> > > to contribute more easily to the project but I also understand your
> > > reservations towards it and understand that you see it as a big
> > > step
> > > especially as the project owner you need to be confident about the
> > > vcs
> > > you're using.
> > >
> > > Yes, I'm still up to helping out with the gradle migration of
> > > course. I will
> > > have a go at it during the weekend. I have some questions though.
> > > What do we
> > > exactly need to port? It's of course building and running the
> > > tests,
> > > deploying to Codehaus maven repo (we're doing it in geb, so I will
> > > probably
> > > have a look at how it's done there) and generating (also
> > > uploading?) the
> > > site. Is there anything else? I'm not a maven specialist so can you
> > > please
> > > list all of the commands you're using in your workflow to achieve
> > > the
> > > aforementioned tasks? What version of maven/other setup I need to
> > > run all of
> > > the tasks?
> > >
> > > I still haven't received any response from Rene about the site
> > > plugin but I
> > > will try to use it anyway and get it to a working state if
> > > necessary.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Marcin
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 3:03 AM, Chris Mair
> > > <chr...@ea...> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Marcin,
> > >>
> > >> I was expecting/hoping that we could treat these as two separate
> > >> issues.
> > >> I'm
> > >> not sure that I am up for trying to tackle both at the same time.
> > >> At some
> > >> point, I need to do some analysis to figure out the impacts of a
> > >> migration
> > >> from Sourceforge+SVN to GitHub+Git.
> > >>
> > >> I am probably more eager to do the Gradle migration, assuming that
> > >> it now
> > >> supports the features that we need. I am also interested in
> > >> getting more
> > >> experience with Git, but I expect that will be more disruptive.
> > >>
> > >> Is doing one without the other (let's say doing Gradle), still
> > >> feasible,
> > >> and
> > >> still something you'd want to help with?
> > >>
> > >> Thanks.
> > >> Chris
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: Marcin Erdmann [mailto:mar...@pr...]
> > >> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 11:30 AM
> > >> To: Chris Mair
> > >> Cc: cod...@li...
> > >> Subject: Re: [Codenarc-developer] My views on making it easier for
> > >> people
> > >> to
> > >> contribute
> > >>
> > >> Chris,
> > >>
> > >> I'm glad to hear that you like my ideas. Here are the two feature
> > >> requests
> > >> on Sourceforge tracker:
> > >>
> > >>
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3546737&group_id=250145&ati
> > >> d=1126575
> > >>
> > >>
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3546740&group_id=250145&ati
> > >> d=1126575
> > >>
> > >> When it comes to the site plugin I'm currently waiting for a
> > >> response from
> > >> Rene Gröschke on the status of the plugin
> > >> (https://github.com/breskeby/GradleSite). After having a quick
> > >> peek at it
> > >> I
> > >> believe it is finished. It's not in central but I could put it
> > >> there cause
> > >> I
> > >> have rights to 'org.gradle.api.plugins' group in Sonatype OSS
> > >> repo.
> > >>
> > >> I can start working on the build migration as soon as we'll put
> > >> the code
> > >> into github - I will create a fork of it and submit a pull request
> > >> when
> > >> it's
> > >> ready. I can also help in migrating the source to github, I've
> > >> migrated
> > >> some
> > >> repos in the past from svn to github using git-svn and could pull
> > >> the
> > >> source
> > >> into the new repo given that I will get commit access to
> > >> CodeNarc's github
> > >> repository - I won't mind if you revoke it after the migration is
> > >> done.
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >> Marcin
> > >>
> > >> On 07/21/2012 02:35 PM, Chris Mair wrote:
> > >> > Marcin,
> > >> >
> > >> > Thank you for the feedback (and the CodeNarc contributions).
> > >> >
> > >> > I am open to both ideas. Can you please open a feature request
> > >> > for
> > >> > each suggestion (Git/Github and Gradle):
> > >> > https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=250145&atid=1126575.
> > >> >
> > >> > Both have been informally suggested before, so it's probably
> > >> > worth
> > >> > getting them to a place where we can consolidate the discussion
> > >> > of the
> > >> > merits and trade-offs, and bring Hamlet into the discussion as
> > >> > well.
> > >> > One of the sticking points with Gradle previously was the lack
> > >> > of a
> > >> > site plugin, since we currently use Maven to generate the
> > >> > CodeNarc web
> > >> > site from APT files, and also generate the APT for the Rules
> > >> > Index
> > >> > page. I have not checked on the status of that lately.
> > >> >
> > >> > Thanks.
> > >> > Chris
> > >> >
> > >> > -----Original Message-----
> > >> > From: Marcin Erdmann [mailto:mar...@pr...]
> > >> > Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 7:34 PM
> > >> > To: cod...@li...
> > >> > Subject: [Codenarc-developer] My views on making it easier for
> > >> > people
> > >> > to contribute
> > >> >
> > >> > Hi all,
> > >> >
> > >> > In the past I've contributed several rules and fixes to
> > >> > Codenarc.
> > >> > Recently we've added Codenarc to our project and we found a
> > >> > major bug
> > >> > in UnnecessarySemicolonRule and wanted to fix it. After checking
> > >> > the
> > >> > project state I've found out that it's still quite tedious to
> > >> > contribute for two reasons - svn and maven.
> > >> >
> > >> > If you want to contribute to Codenarc you need to send patches
> > >> > in
> > >> > email, like I did by sending mails to Hamlet in the past. This
> > >> > would
> > >> > be much easier if the project was on github enabling people to
> > >> > submit
> > >> > pull request... I don't know if there is a CI build set up for
> > >> > the
> > >> > project but by putting it on github and hooking it up with
> > >> > buildhive
> > >> > you get CI builds for free, also for pull requests. Can you
> > >> > please
> > >> > explain what are the reasons for such a valuable project to be
> > >> > still
> > >> > using
> > >> svn?
> > >> >
> > >> > The other thing is getting the project into your IDE. It would
> > >> > be so
> > >> > much easier if there was a gradle build available for the
> > >> > project -
> > >> > simply typing gradle idea would generate the project for you
> > >> > with all
> > >> > the dependencies in place and no additional settings/tweaks
> > >> > needed. If
> > >> > you're interested I could try to contribute by migrating current
> > >> > maven
> > >> > build to gradle. I'm already in talks with Rene Gröschke about
> > >> > his
> > >> > efforts
> > >> in the past in that area.
> > >> >
> > >> > Cheers,
> > >> > Marcin Erdmann
> > >> >
> > >> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >> > ------
> > >> > --
> > >> > Live Security Virtual Conference
> > >> > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security
> > >> > and
> > >> > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond.
> > >> > Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and
> > >> > the
> > >> > latest in malware threats.
> > >> > http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> > >> > _______________________________________________
> > >> > Codenarc-developer mailing list
> > >> > Cod...@li...
> > >> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/codenarc-developer
> > >> >
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Live Security Virtual Conference
> > > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> > > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond.
> > > Discussions
> > > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in
> > > malware
> > > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Codenarc-developer mailing list
> > > Cod...@li...
> > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/codenarc-developer
> > >
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Live Security Virtual Conference
> > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond.
> > Discussions
> > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in
> > malware
> > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> > _______________________________________________
> > Codenarc-developer mailing list
> > Cod...@li...
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/codenarc-developer
> >
>