Proposal: activating GitHub Projects tool on SageMath repo

[Vincent Macri]

I would like to propose that we activate GitHub Projects on the sagemath/sage GitHub repo.

GitHub Projects is a GitHub feature that allows for the organization of related issues, and helps to track the overall progress on a group of issues. Some examples of how I think it would be useful to us:

• To track long-term meta issues where we don't want to have to rely on a single person updating a single meta-issue.
• For example, we could setup a project to track progress on typing annotations in the Sage library, breaking down progress by directories in the Sage source tree and how far along typing annotations are for that part of Sage.
• To track progress on larger projects in SageMath, such as the implementation of Sage Enhancement Proposals.
• To use during Sage Days: each Sage Days could create a GitHub project for the event to track everything that happens during the event
• I know some Sage Days create a new GitHub label, but that requires a high level of GitHub permissions to create, and then clutters the list of labels afterwards
• More experienced participants working with others on some larger development task at Sage Days could create a GitHub Project outlining the various subtasks that need to be completed, to provide more structure to newer contributors in their group about what needs to be done, and plan who is going to work on each subtask.
• A secondary benefit of this is that it provides an easy record of what was worked on during the Sage Days event. As a Sage Days organizer, I think this would be useful for giving us an easy way to point to concrete things that were accomplished at Sage Days as evidence of the usefulness of Sage Days when applying for funding to host future Sage Days events.

I'll also note that GitHub Projects is already enabled for the sagemath GitHub organization, so technically we can do all these things already, but it's much easier to find and use if it's enabled at the repository level. GitHub Projects is also already enabled for some of other of our repositories. I expect that GitHub Projects will primarily be used for larger development tasks where multiple Sage developers need to coordinate their work.

I've raised this issue in a previous sage-devel thread, and more recently on our Zulip where David Roe recommended having a formal discussion and vote on sage-devel about this.

I would like to give people a week to discuss, after which I will call for a vote.

[Doris Behrendt]

Hi all,

I think it is a good idea. I'm already using this tool in other projects. It's similar to a Kanban board, and you can link directly within GitHub.

-- Doris

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[Dima Pasechnik]

I'm on the fence regarding using more features of GitHub, due to the ongoing, pardon my French, merdification of it on various fronts.

We ought to be preparing a Plan B for the case it's getting expensive to use, or just broken.

[Vincent Macri]

On 2026-04-21 10:49 a.m., Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> I'm on the fence regarding using more features of GitHub, due to the
> ongoing, pardon my French, merdification of it on various fronts.
> We ought to be preparing a Plan B for the case it's getting expensive
> to use, or just broken.

I understand the hesitation as I'm not a huge fan of GitHub either, but
it is what we use right now. That said, GitLab (probably the most likely
Plan B) has a similar feature. In GitLab this feature is called Issue
Boards. So if you prefer, you can consider this a proposal to enable the
project management tool for whatever platform the Sage repo is hosted on.

I'll also add, when I was testing in my personal repo it seems that with
GitHub Projects any non-draft task has to be either a GitHub issue or
GitHub PR anyway, so really this is just providing a tool to better keep
track of issues and PRs, both of which we use already.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 12:35:21 PM UTC-5 Vincent Macri wrote:

On 2026-04-21 10:49 a.m., Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> I'm on the fence regarding using more features of GitHub, due to the
> ongoing, pardon my French, merdification of it on various fronts.
> We ought to be preparing a Plan B for the case it's getting expensive
> to use, or just broken.

I understand the hesitation as I'm not a huge fan of GitHub either, but
it is what we use right now. That said, GitLab (probably the most likely
Plan B) has a similar feature. In GitLab this feature is called Issue
Boards. So if you prefer, you can consider this a proposal to enable the
project management tool for whatever platform the Sage repo is hosted on.

I'd rather consider codeberg, which is, unlike GitLab, basically a non-commercial cooperative project.

[Jaap Spies]

We definitely need a plan B to 'deshitify' away from Microsoft. Who needs a copilot?

Considering self-hosting Forgejo? 

Forgejo - Wikipedia https://share.google/2sywBRkZHx1NZKsFF  Read the history.
https://forgejo.org/

Jaap

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[Doris Behrendt]

Codeberg?

On 22. Apr 2026, at 09:54, Jaap Spies <jaap...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jaap Spies]

Follow the link: https://forgejo.org/

Op wo 22 apr 2026, 10:08 schreef 'Doris Behrendt' via sage-devel <sage-...@googlegroups.com>:

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/5E1DA9DD-CB88-4E11-9CBC-5E27A07F12E4%40me.com.

[Vincent Macri]

Is forgejo just the self-hosted version of codeberg? Either way, to stick to the original topic, both have a similar Projects feature. So, this proposal wouldn't really interfere with a hypothetical move away from GitHub to these platforms either.

Vincent Macri (he/him)

[Dima Pasechnik]

Yes, forgejo is more or less what codeberg is running, and it's opensource (like gitlab).

Unlike gitlab, codeberg is governed by its members (anyone can become a member for about EUR 25 per year).

[Jaap Spies]

The forgejo and codeberg approach reminds me of the early spirit of SAGE to be an alternative to the big M's, Maple, Mathematica and Magma.
Away from commercial software: free and open source.
Ik think Forgejo Actions can be a free and open source alternative to github actions. 

What about this: https://cli.github.com/telemetry

I know, avoiding big tech is not easy done, but we should think about it.

Jaap

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[Vincent Delecroix]

Out of politeness for the OP, I would suggest not to discuss the shift
to Forgejo in this thread.

Coming back to the original question: if there are ready made tools
that can help active sage developers in their daily work +1

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[Vincent Delecroix]

Sorry: I confused threads.

On Fri, 24 Apr 2026 at 10:03, Vincent Delecroix