[oi-dev] [developer] Illumos/OI Projects Tooling

[Andreas Wacknitz]

Am 16.08.25 um 15:09 schrieb Peter Tribble:
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 11:12 PM Joshua M. Clulow via 
> illumos-developer <developer at lists.illumos.org> wrote:
>
>     On Fri, 15 Aug 2025 at 14:56, Atiq Rahman <atiqcx at gmail.com> wrote:
>     > Thanks to both of you.
>
>     You're welcome!
>
>     > May I suggest we move https://www.illumos.org/projects to Github
>     or GitLab?
>     > Old tools look daunting and will essentially alienate new
>     contributors. Potential contributors are mostly using
>     Github/Gitlab IMO.
>
>     It has certainly been considered in the past, but it really isn't
>     clear that merely changing to a different bug tracker or code review
>     system is going to result in a significant wave of serious new
>     contributions.
>
>
> The telling word there is "merely". It's not just about substituting 
> one piece
> such as the bug tracker for another, it's about replacing the whole 
> workflow
> wholesale.
>
> And if you were to pitch contribution to a newly interested person, 
> which of
> the following would be more likely to succeed?
>
> 1. Hi! Yeah, set up a completely new account over here. Fill in a unique
> bugtracker over there. Follow a non-standard set of processes to create
> a change. Interact with a mailing list, which may or may not get back to
> you. Interact again with our bugtracker. Once you've got that far, 
> interact
> with a different mailing list, and if you're lucky your change might get
> committed.
>
> or:
>
> 2. Hi! Yeah, just use the exact same process used for millions of other
> projects, on a system you've probably already using.
>
> No contest, really. Our existing processes, systems, and workflow impose
> significant barriers to contribution, which might go some way to explain
> why we don't get any new contributors.
>
> The heavyweight nature of our processes is also a major barrier that
> discourages contributions by existing members of the community. If we
> want illumos to improve, then barriers must be lowered.
>
>     The hurdle we actually have is that working on an operating system is
>     itself often daunting.  It's a large code base that has been around
>     for a long time.  It's not the kind of software that most people work
>     on.  There is a sort of implicit assumption, I guess, that it's going
>     to be very difficult instead of merely a different kind of work.  This
>     isn't actually the case, of course: the kernel is just a big C
>     program!  Anybody can learn enough to contribute, if they're
>     motivated.
>
>     I think if you're already keen to contribute, it's unlikely, on
>     balance, that the bug tracker is going to be the reason that you
>     don't.
>
>
> It won't be *the* only reason, but along with other impediments, it will
> be *a* reason.
>
The problematic process you are referring to is for illumos-gate.
For OpenIndiana we have a very simple process using github. You only 
need to clone our oi-userland repository to a local build machine and 
can start right away. Nevertheless the number of OI maintainers is very 
low and new contributors are rare.

Andreas
> -- 
> -Peter Tribble
> http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
>
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