[Python-Dev] PEP 595: Improving bugs.python.org (original) (raw)

Ezio Melotti ezio.melotti at gmail.com
Thu May 23 16:17:24 EDT 2019

Previous message (by thread): [Python-Dev] Have a big machine and spare time? Here's a possible Python bug.
Next message (by thread): [Python-Dev] [python-committers] PEP 595: Improving bugs.python.org
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

Hello, Berker and I have been working on a PEP that suggests we keep using and improving bugs.python.org and Roundup instead of switching to GitHub Issues as proposed by PEP 581.

The PEP covers:

What are the advantages of Roundup over GitHub issues;
What features are missing in Roundup and how can we add them;
Issues with PEP 581;
Issues with the migration plan proposed by PEP 588;

The rendered version of PEP 595 is available at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0595/

For reference, you can consult PEP 581 and 588 at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0581/ and https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0588/

The full text of the PEP is include below. We are planning to update the PEP to include the feedback we receive and to update the status of features as we implement them (we also have a Google Summer of Code students working on it).

Best Regards, Ezio Melotti

================ PEP: 595 Title: Improving bugs.python.org Author: Ezio Melotti <ezio.melotti at gmail.com>, Berker Peksag <berker.peksag at gmail.com> Status: Draft Type: Process Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 12-May-2019

Abstract

This PEP proposes a list of improvements to make bugs.python.org more usable for contributors and core developers. This PEP also discusses why remaining on Roundup should be preferred over switching to GitHub Issues, as proposed by :pep:581.

Motivation

On May 14th, 2019 :pep:581 has been accepted [#]_ without much public discussion and without a clear consensus [#]_. The PEP contains factual errors and doesn't address some of the issues that the migration to GitHub Issues might present.

Given the scope of the migration, the amount of work required, and how it will negatively affect the workflow during the transition phase, this decision should be re-evaluated.

Roundup advantages over GitHub Issues

This section discusses reasons why Roundup should be preferred over GitHub Issues and Roundup features that are not available on GitHub Issues.

Roundup is the status quo. Roundup has been an integral part of the CPython workflow for years. It is a stable product that has been tested and customized to adapt to our needs as the workflow evolved.

It is possible to gradually improve it and avoid the disruption that a switch to a different system would inevitabily bring to the workflow.
Open-source and Python powered. Roundup is an open-source project and is written in Python. By using it and supporting it, we also support the Python ecosystem. Several features developed for bpo have also been ported to upstream Roundup over the years.
Fully customizable. Roundup can be (and has been) fully customized to fit our needs.
Finer-grained access control. Roundup allows the creation of different roles with different permissions (e.g. create, view, edit, etc.) for each individual property, and users can have multiple roles.
Flexible UI. While Roundup UI might look dated, it is convenient and flexible.

For example, on the issue page, each field (e.g. title, type, versions, status, linked files and PRs, etc.) have appropriate UI elements (input boxes, dropdowns, tables, etc.) that are easy to set and also provide a convenient way to get info about the issue at a glance. The number of fields, their values, and the UI element they use is also fully customizable. GitHub only provides labels.

The issue list page presents the issues in a compact and easy to read table with separate columns for different fields. For comparison, Roundup lists 50 issues in a screen, whereas GitHub takes two screens to shows 25 issues.
Advanced search. Roundup provides an accurate way to search and filter by using any combination of issue fields. It is also possible to customize the number of results and the fields displayed in the table, and the sorting and grouping (up to two levels).

bpo also provides predefined summaries (e.g. "Created by you", "Assigned to you", etc.) and allows the creation of custom search queries that can be conveniently accessed from the sidebar.
Nosy list autocomplete. The nosy list has an autocomplete feature that suggests maintainers and experts. The suggestions are automatically updated when the experts index [#]_ changes.
Dependencies and Superseders. Roundup allows to specify dependencies that must be addressed before the current issues can be closed and a superseder issue to easily mark duplicates [#]. The list of dependencies can also be used to create meta-issues that references several other sub-issues [#].

Improving Roundup

This section lists some of the issues mentioned by :pep:581 and other desired features and discusses how they can be implemented by improving Roundup and/or our instance.

REST API support. A REST API will make integration with other services and the development of new tools and applications easiers.

Upstream Roundup now supports a REST API. Updating the tracker will make the REST API available.
GitHub login support. This will allow users to login to bugs.python.org (bpo) without having to create a new account. It will also solve issues with confirmation emails being marked as spam, and provide two-factor authentication.

A patch to add this functionality is already available and is being integrated at the time of writing [#]_.
Markdown support and message preview and editing. This feature will allow the use of Markdown in messages and the ability to preview the message before the submission and edit it afterward.

This can be done, but it will take some work. Possible solutions have been proposed on the roundup-devel mailing list [#]_.
"Remove me from nosy list" button. Add a button on issue pages to remove self from the nosy list.

This feature will be added during GSoC 2019.
Mobile friendly theme. Current theme of bugs.python.org looks dated and it doesn't work well with mobile browsers.

A mobile-friendly theme that is more modern but still familiar will be added.
Add PR link to BPO emails. Currently bpo emails don't include links to the corresponding PRs.

A patch [#]_ is available to change the content of the bpo emails from::

components: +Tkinter versions: +Python 3.4 pull_requests: +42

to::

components: +Tkinter versions: +Python 3.4 pull_request: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/341
Python 3 support. Using Python 3 will make maintenance easier.

Upstream Roundup now supports Python 3. Updating the tracker will allow us to switch to Python 3. The instances will need to be updated as well.
Use upstream Roundup. We currently use a fork of Roundup with a few modifications, most notably the GitHub integration. If this is ported upstream, we can start using upstream Roundup without having to maintain our fork.

PEP 581 issues

This section addresses some errors and inaccuracies found in :pep:581.

The "Why GitHub?" section of PEP 581 lists features currently available on GitHub Issues but not on Roundup. Some of this features are currently supported:

"Ability to reply to issue and pull request conversations via email."
- Being able to reply by email has been one of the core features of Roundup since the beginning. It is also possible to create new issues or close existing ones, set or modify fields, and add attachments.
"Email notifications containing metadata, integrated with Gmail, allowing systematic filtering of emails."
- Emails sent by Roundup contains metadata that can be used for filtering.
"Additional privacy, such as offering the user a choice to hide an email address, while still allowing communication with the user through @-mentions."
- Email addresses are hidden by default to users that are not registered. Registered users can see other users' addresses because we configured the tracker to show them. It can easily be changed if desired. Users can still be added to the nosy list by using their username even if their address is hidden.
"Ability to automatically close issues when a PR has been merged."
- The GitHub integration of Roundup automatically closes issues when a commit that contains "fixes issue " is merged. (Alternative spellings such as "closes" or "bug" are also supported.) See [#]_ for a recent example of this feature.
"Support for permalinks, allowing easy quoting and copying & pasting of source code."
- Roundup has permalinks for issues, messages, attachments, etc. In addition, Roundup allows to easily rewrite broken URLs in messages (e.g. if the code hosting changes).
"Core developers, volunteers, and the PSF don't have to maintain the issue infrastructure/site, giving us more time and resources to focus on the development of Python."
- While this is partially true, additional resources are required to write and maintain bots.
  
  In some cases, bots are required to workaround GitHub's lack of features rather than expanding. [#]_ was written specifically to workaround GitHub's email integration.
  
  Updating our bots to stay up-to-date with changes in the GitHub API has also maintenance cost. [#]_ took two days to be fixed.
  
  In addition, we will still need to maintain Roundup for bpo (even if it becomes read-only) and for the other trackers we currently host/maintain (Jython [#]_ and Roundup [#]_).

The "Issues with Roundup / bpo" section of :pep:581 lists some issues that have already been fixed:

"The upstream Roundup code is in Mercurial. Without any CI available, it puts heavy burden on the few existing maintainers in terms of reviewing, testing, and applying patches."
- While Roundup uses Mercurial by default, there is a git clone available on GitHub [#]. Roundup also has CI available [#] [#]_.
"There is no REST API available. There is an open issue in Roundup for adding REST API. Last activity was in 2016."
- The REST API has been integrated and it's now available in Roundup.
"Users email addresses are exposed. There is no option to mask it."
- Exposing addresses to registered and logged in users was a decision taken when our instance was set up.
  
  This has now been changed to make the email addresses hidden for regular users too (Developers and Coordinators can still see them). The "Email address"" column from the user listing page [#]_ has been removed too.
"It sends a number of unnecessary emails and notifications, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to configure."
- This can be configured.
"Creating an account has been a hassle. There have been reports of people having trouble creating accounts or logging in."
- The main issue is confirmation emails being marked as spam. Work has been done to resolve the issue.

Migration considerations

This section describes issues with the migrations that might not have been addressed by :pep:581 and :pep:588.

:pep:588 suggests to add a button to migrate issues to GitHub only when someone wants to keep working on them. This approach has several issues:

bpo will need to be updated in order to add a button that, once pressed, creates a new issue on GitHub, copies over all the messages, attachments, and creates/adds label for the existing fields. Permissions will also need to be tweaked to make individual issues read-only once they are migrated, and to prevent users to create new accounts.
The issues will be split between two trackers; searching issues will take significant more effort.
The conversion from Roundup to GitHub is lossy, unless all the bpo fields are converted into labels or preserved somewhere else.
bpo converts a number of references into links, including issue, message, and PR IDs, changeset numbers, legacy SVN revision numbers, paths to files in the repo, files in tracebacks (detecting the correct branch), links to devguide pages and sections [#]_. This happens when messages are requested so it is possible to create the correct link (e.g. all the file links used to point to hg.python.org and now point to GitHub).

If the links are hardcoded during the migration, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to change them later. If they aren't, they will either be lost, or a tool to generate the links and updating them will need to be written.
GitHub doesn't provide a way to set and preserve issue IDs if they are migrated automatically with the use of a button. (Some projects managed to preserve the IDs by contaacting the GitHub staff and migrating the issues en masse.)
On top of the work and changes required to migrate to GitHub issues, we will still need to keep running and maintaining Roundup, for both our instance (read-only) and for the Jython and Roundup trackers (read-write).

In addition to the issues listed in the "Open issues" section of :pep:588, this issues will need to be addressed:

GitHub is properietary and there is risk of vendor lock-in. Their business model might change and they could shut down altogether.
Switching to GitHub Issues will likely increase the number of invalid reports and increase the triaging effort. This concern has been raised in the past in a Zulip topic [#]_.

There have been already cases where people posted comments on PRs that required moderators to mark them as off-topic or disruptive, delete them altogether, and even lock the conversation [#]_.
Roundup sends weekly reports to python-dev with a summary that includes new issues, recent issues with no replies, recent issues waiting for review, most discussed issues, closed issues, and deltas for open/closed/total issue counts [#]_. The report provides an easy way to keep track of the tracker activity and to make sure that issues that require attention are noticed.

The data collect by the weekly report is also use to generate statistics and graphs that can be used to gain new insights [#]_.
There are currently two mailing lists where Roundup posts new tracker issues and all messages respectively: new-bugs-announce [#]_ and python-bugs-list [#]_. A new system will need to be developed to preserve this functionality. These MLs offer additional ways to keep track of the tracker activity.