Hi everyone,
a large number of plugins (and possibly other components) define HTTP URLs for dependency resolution and in some cases, distribution repositories. I'd like to clean this up.
There are a few options here:
1. I just directly commit to the repos with this minimal change. AFAICT, Nicolas did something similar in 2013.[1]
2. File a few hundred PRs to change the URL.
3. Start with PRs, but merge myself when maintainers don't. This is basically what Oliver ended up doing when we added Jenkinsfiles to plugin repositories.[2]
4. Do nothing (or perhaps just file bugs)
5. Some other option…?
I do not think it's a reasonable approach to not act here, so option 4 is out. While the risk is low, it's a step in the right direction without any drawbacks I can think of.
My preferred option would be 3: File PRs now, merge when they get no response after an appropriate number of weeks/months. This most respects (active) maintainers' ownership of plugins, while cleaning up both currently unmaintained plugins, as well as (I expect) the vast majority of maintained plugins.
As a side effect, maintainers' (lack of) response to these PRs can be used to identify currently unmaintained plugins. Even during summer holiday season, not merging (nor commenting, nor closing) a trivial PR going from HTTP to HTTPS for perhaps 4-8 weeks or so is a pretty good indicator a plugin is unmaintained. Something similar has been discussed previously[3], but no consensus was reached -- in this case it's just a side effect of some of the approaches.
WDYT?
Daniel
1: E.g.
https://github.com/jenkinsci/codecover-plugin/commit/ea652d3fb7b6899e44493e635401dee539ceacd9, lots of long abandoned plugins last got updated in late 2013 because of these commits.
2:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/jenkinsci-dev/6f_wKvfpESk/TKIRm4QvAwAJ
3:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/jenkinsci-dev/Ih0RviQ0G90/NmoVJQ1j6NAJ