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iulian dragos
Oct 22, 2015, 4:05:46 AM10/22/15
to scala-ide-dev
Hi everyone,
--
Assembla was never really easy to use, but it seems it's getting increasingly confusing for occasional bug reporters. For example, it is very unclear for a new user that it can create a free account, and even once you have the account, permissions may subtly prevent new tickets or comments. The UI is also sluggish and unintuitive.
Is it time to move off Assembla to something better?
My suggestions:
1. JIRA
I know Jira is pretty good and they have an open-source program, so we'd probably get a free account. I used it on Apache projects and I like it. It has all the features you could wish for, relatively good UI. No good support for Markdown, but I think there's an additional plugin.
2. GitHub Issues
It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the OP when we need more info, but it will make it hard to know what tickets are still valid. I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
There's still the issue of importing existing tickets, but I imagine there's a solution with either system.
Any thoughts?
iulian
« Je déteste la montagne, ça cache le paysage »
Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais
Kevin Wright
Oct 22, 2015, 4:25:56 AM10/22/15
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Given that scalac already uses Jira, I think it’s the obvious choice.
Anyone working in the scala ecosystem should already be familiar with it, and we’ll all be able to use the same tools.
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Bardur Arantsson
Oct 22, 2015, 1:42:15 PM10/22/15
to scala-...@googlegroups.com
On 10/22/2015 10:05 AM, iulian dragos wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
[--snip--]
GitHub issues is a terrible, terrible issue tracker unless you a) have a
*very* small project (tens of issues, say), and/or b) have people who
can and will actively do all the manual work that's basically caused by
its lack of features and "smart"[1] handling of linking issues, etc. It
requires *a lot* of thankless manual work to keep things sane.
It's also absolutely hellish to get any kind of reasonable overview of
the overall state of the project.
(There's a lot more to be said against GitHub issues, but I think you
get the gist. :))
Regards,
> Hi everyone,
>
[--snip--]
> 2. GitHub Issues
>
> It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but
> I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like
> Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the
> OP when we need more info, but it will make it hard to know what tickets
> are still valid. I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several
> thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus
> side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
>
Just my €0.02:
>
> It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but
> I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like
> Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the
> OP when we need more info, but it will make it hard to know what tickets
> are still valid. I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several
> thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus
> side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
>
GitHub issues is a terrible, terrible issue tracker unless you a) have a
*very* small project (tens of issues, say), and/or b) have people who
can and will actively do all the manual work that's basically caused by
its lack of features and "smart"[1] handling of linking issues, etc. It
requires *a lot* of thankless manual work to keep things sane.
It's also absolutely hellish to get any kind of reasonable overview of
the overall state of the project.
(There's a lot more to be said against GitHub issues, but I think you
get the gist. :))
Regards,
Mirko Stocker
Oct 23, 2015, 2:15:58 AM10/23/15
to scala-...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
On Thursday 22 October 2015 10.05:15 iulian dragos wrote:
> Assembla was never really easy to use, but it seems it's getting
> increasingly confusing for occasional bug reporters.
+1
> It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but
> I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like
> Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the
> OP when we need more info,
I agree, it's very minimalistic. At least you can set a link to contributing
guidelines [1] where we can ask the reporter to mention the Eclipse version,
etc.
> I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several
> thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus
> side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
That's definitely a big plus, and I guess their issue tracker will only get
better (although, I've been saying this to myself for years now..).
I've looked at some large projects on GitHub, e.g. Docker has more than 1000
open issues [2], and they seem to manage but it looks a bit chaotic :-)
Cheers
Mirko
[1] https://help.github.com/articles/setting-guidelines-for-repository-contributors/
[2] https://github.com/docker/docker/issues
--
Mirko Stocker | mi...@stocker.email
Work: http://ifs.hsr.ch | http://infoq.com
Personal: http://misto.ch | http://twitter.com/m_st
On Thursday 22 October 2015 10.05:15 iulian dragos wrote:
> Assembla was never really easy to use, but it seems it's getting
> increasingly confusing for occasional bug reporters.
> It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but
> I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like
> Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the
> OP when we need more info,
guidelines [1] where we can ask the reporter to mention the Eclipse version,
etc.
> I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several
> thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus
> side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
better (although, I've been saying this to myself for years now..).
I've looked at some large projects on GitHub, e.g. Docker has more than 1000
open issues [2], and they seem to manage but it looks a bit chaotic :-)
Cheers
Mirko
[1] https://help.github.com/articles/setting-guidelines-for-repository-contributors/
[2] https://github.com/docker/docker/issues
--
Mirko Stocker | mi...@stocker.email
Work: http://ifs.hsr.ch | http://infoq.com
Personal: http://misto.ch | http://twitter.com/m_st
Simon Schäfer
Oct 23, 2015, 4:44:31 AM10/23/15
to scala-...@googlegroups.com
On 10/22/2015 10:05 AM, iulian dragos
wrote:
Hi everyone,
Assembla was never really easy to use, but it seems it's getting increasingly confusing for occasional bug reporters. For example, it is very unclear for a new user that it can create a free account, and even once you have the account, permissions may subtly prevent new tickets or comments. The UI is also sluggish and unintuitive.
Is it time to move off Assembla to something better?
I don't think there really exists a better alternative. Beside from
that it seems to be the exception that users don't find out how to
create a ticket. There are a lot of names on the first page of
newest tickets. And just one person in the last weeks who complained
that they didn't find out how to open a ticket. Github would be the
only issue tracker that could make user entry easier because
everyone already has a Github account.
My suggestions:
1. JIRA
I know Jira is pretty good and they have an open-source program, so we'd probably get a free account. I used it on Apache projects and I like it. It has all the features you could wish for, relatively good UI. No good support for Markdown, but I think there's an additional plugin.
The amount of work that is necessary to setup JIRA and the time to
learn it (at least for me) is not worth it imho. And users still
have to create an account, don't they?
2. GitHub Issues
It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the OP when we need more info, but it will make it hard to know what tickets are still valid. I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
These are also my thoughts. We just would loose features by moving
to Github.
There's still the issue of importing existing tickets, but I imagine there's a solution with either system.
We would loose history for sure and internal references like
referenced tickets, which is a big loss.
Any thoughts?
iulian--
« Je déteste la montagne, ça cache le paysage »
Alphonse Allais
iulian dragos
Oct 23, 2015, 5:22:30 AM10/23/15
to scala-ide-dev
On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Simon Schäfer <ma...@antoras.de> wrote:
On 10/22/2015 10:05 AM, iulian dragos wrote:
I don't think there really exists a better alternative. Beside from that it seems to be the exception that users don't find out how to create a ticket. There are a lot of names on the first page of newest tickets. And just one person in the last weeks who complained that they didn't find out how to open a ticket. Github would be the only issue tracker that could make user entry easier because everyone already has a Github account.Hi everyone,
Assembla was never really easy to use, but it seems it's getting increasingly confusing for occasional bug reporters. For example, it is very unclear for a new user that it can create a free account, and even once you have the account, permissions may subtly prevent new tickets or comments. The UI is also sluggish and unintuitive.
Is it time to move off Assembla to something better?
I don't think we hear much about those that can't do it. Last week Jason Zaugg told me he tried twice to update a ticket related to the presentation compiler and failed. How many like him did NOT email one of us? This is a real problem.
The amount of work that is necessary to setup JIRA and the time to learn it (at least for me) is not worth it imho. And users still have to create an account, don't they?My suggestions:
1. JIRA
I know Jira is pretty good and they have an open-source program, so we'd probably get a free account. I used it on Apache projects and I like it. It has all the features you could wish for, relatively good UI. No good support for Markdown, but I think there's an additional plugin.
Maybe my background using the Scala Jira helped, but I am sure Assembla is harder to "get". My main complaint is that if I look at https://www.assembla.com/home I have no idea how to sign up for a free account.
These are also my thoughts. We just would loose features by moving to Github.
2. GitHub Issues
It is getting better, though it is very unstructured. Labels are cool, but I can't see them as good enough when it comes to required fields, like Eclipse version or product version. We could ditch all fields and ask the OP when we need more info, but it will make it hard to know what tickets are still valid. I'm also not sure how well it will cope with several thousand tickets. And only committers can assign labels. :-/ On the plus side, everything is on GitHub now, so it's familiar and centralized.
We would loose history for sure and internal references like referenced tickets, which is a big loss.
There's still the issue of importing existing tickets, but I imagine there's a solution with either system.
We should take care of those, of course, especially cross-links. I doubt it's impossible though.
iulian
Simon Schäfer
Oct 23, 2015, 6:20:15 AM10/23/15
to scala-...@googlegroups.com
The question is how long it takes to move to a different system.
After a quick look I couldn't find a tool that would automatically
understand Assembla data. I can't imagine how much work it is to
analyze a data export from Assembla and convert the data to a
different format. Especially since we also want to update code
blocks, references etc.
Has anyone experience doing such a thing?
Has anyone experience doing such a thing?
iulian
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Naftoli Gugenheim
Oct 26, 2015, 1:17:08 AM10/26/15
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I highly highly highly recommend switching to YouTrack. It's as powerful as JIRA but better in a lot of ways. I've used it a lot and it's great.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scala-ide-dev/562A09DE.7080301%40antoras.de.
Simon Schäfer
Nov 3, 2015, 1:18:30 PM11/3/15
to Scala IDE Dev
A few links for a possible migration to Github:
- https://www.zenhub.io/
A planner that is directly integrated into Github through Browser extensions. It looks really cool. Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRu7vKCg920
It is a commerce app, but seems to be free for OSS projects. Also, it seems that it does support more or less everything Assembla supports too.
- https://waffle.io
Similar to Zenhub. Integrates with Github but available only as an external site.
- https://overv.io/
Similar to the two above. Don't know which one is best.
- https://www.quora.com/Which-project-management-tools-are-deeply-integrated-with-GitHub
As it seems to me, the largest outstanding issue with a Github migration is that they do not support the creation of labels automatically. I couldn't find any external services that would do this well. Some projects already have a tagging service but it always seems to be custom built.
- https://www.zenhub.io/
A planner that is directly integrated into Github through Browser extensions. It looks really cool. Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRu7vKCg920
It is a commerce app, but seems to be free for OSS projects. Also, it seems that it does support more or less everything Assembla supports too.
- https://waffle.io
Similar to Zenhub. Integrates with Github but available only as an external site.
- https://overv.io/
Similar to the two above. Don't know which one is best.
- https://www.quora.com/Which-project-management-tools-are-deeply-integrated-with-GitHub
As it seems to me, the largest outstanding issue with a Github migration is that they do not support the creation of labels automatically. I couldn't find any external services that would do this well. Some projects already have a tagging service but it always seems to be custom built.
Simon Schäfer
Nov 3, 2015, 1:18:38 PM11/3/15
to Scala IDE Dev
Naftoli Gugenheim
Nov 3, 2015, 1:35:04 PM11/3/15
to Scala IDE Dev
I don't think any of those have custom fields, or relationships between issues
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