QGIS issue tracker migration plan

QGIS Development platform migration plan

This is an ongoing work and will need approval once it is done. Do not take it as a fixed plan. Contributions welcome, please get in touch if you want to participate.

Edit 2018-06-05 : This migration plan is in no way related to the recent news that Microsoft buys GitHub. This plan has been drafted way before, and is based on feature analysis and is originally triggered by the intention to migrate from Redmine to another issue tracker.

This draft takes Gitlab as a target.

The CI part is not touched in this plan, as a GitHub mirror of the code would be kept to be able to trigger Travis build and CI. Full CI migration to GitLab would be interesting but is not on the critical path and can be worked on later.

Requirements

Issue tracker

• migration of issues
• migration of issues trackers
• migration of issues categories
• migration of issues status
• migration of issues assignments
• migration of issues Ids
• migration of issues URL
• migration of issues attachment
• migration of issue creation date
• migration of issue content formatting
• migration of internal linking between issues
• migration of references between issues
• migration of references between issues and PR / commits
• migration of versions / roadmaps in issues
• migration of comments author
• migration of comments dates
• migration of issue creator
• migration of notifications parameters for each issue/user

Code tracker

• migration of source code and history ( git repository)
• migration of branches
• migration of Tags
• migration of PRs
• migration of PRs authors
• migration of PRs comments
• migration of code comments in PRs reviews

Continuous integration

• compilation
• test
• package building (continuous delivery)

Various

• Opensource solution
• Allow to backups of our issues, code, PRs

Actions plan

• Try a migration of issues from Redmine to a Gitlab instance with the requirements above
• Decide between in-house or gitlab.com ( needed for item below)
• Define user mapping between Redmine users and Gitlab
  • email users so they create an account on the target platform if they want to have their issues and comments still assigned.
  • Also an opportunity to ask them nicely to clean their issues in redmine.
  • Determine how much users kept and lost
• Alternative in case of in-house gitlab :
  • automatically create accounts on our GitLab for each redmine account
• Take the decision to apply the plan
• Make public announcement on the forthcoming change
• Define an issue management policy using labels
• Create templates for issues in Gitlab
• Put Redmine in read-only mode
• Launch the real migration of issues
• Make public announcement on the change
• Do a issue triage
• Have Gitlab as a mirror of GitHub Code
• Make Github read-only ( Code & PR)
• Import GitHub code and PRs to GitLab
• Switch code and PR references to Gitlab in all documents
• Document how to input a new issue
• Setup a code mirror on GitHub to keep Travis CI happy
• Convert Travis scripts to GitLab CI
• Shutdown Redmine

Status of requirements tests with Gitlab

Issue tracker

item	status	notes
migration of issues	ok	all issues can be migrated
migration of issues trackers	ok	trackers are migrated as labels
migration of issues categories	ok	categories are migrated as labels
migration of issues status	ok	open/closed is respected, full status additionally migrated as label
migration of issues assignments	WIP	needs a user mapping file
migration of issues Ids	WIP	should theoritically work, not tested. May require shell access to target server
migration of issues URL	WIP	should theoritically work, not tested. Require Apache setup on origin server
migration of issues attachment	ok	inline images are kept too
migration of issue creation date	ok
migration of issue content formatting	WIP	so far formatting is kept, converted to Markdown
migration of internal linking between issues	WIP	not tested yet
migration of references between issues	WIP	not tested yet
migration of references between issues and PR / commits	WIP	not tested yet
migration of versions / roadmaps in issues	ok	migrated as milestones
migration of comments author	ok	needs user mapping file
migration of comments dates	workaround	comment dates are inserted in the comment
migration of issue creator	ok	needs a user mapping file
migration of notifications parameters for each issue/user	ko	notification parameters are different between redmine and Gitlab and will be lost

Code tracker

Tested here using Gitlab.com import tool : https://gitlab.com/mhugo/QGIS/

item	status	notes
migration of source code and history ( git repository)	ok	through Gitlab import or directly with git remote
migration of PRs	ok	PRs are migrated ok with GitLab.com import tool
migration of PRs authors	ok	ok with gitlab.com tool for all users registered on gitlab.com. When user does not exists the original user is named in PR comment. Unknown if in-house hosting allows for user creation before and therefore migration of all authors (with which tool ?)
migration of PRs comments	ok	with gitlab.com tool
migration of code comments in PRs reviews	WIP	to be analyzed in abovementionned repository

Continuous integration (GitLab CI/CD)

item	status	notes
compilation	WIP
test	WIP
package building (continuous delivery)	WIP

Various

item	status	notes
Opensource solution	ok	OpenCore model, Community Edition usable online or on-premises
Allow to backups of our issues, code, PRs	ok	if in-house, classic backups. If gitlab.com "export" feature