[oi-dev] Illumos/OI Projects Tooling

[Andreas Wacknitz]

Am 18.08.25 um 01:45 schrieb Atiq Rahman:
> > OpenIndiana we have a very simple process using github
> Enabling github issues on https://github.com/OpenIndiana/oi-userland 
> will help the simplicity
Like Toomas answered for illumos-gate already, switching the issue 
tracker for Openindiana from redmine to github won't change a lot (other 
than more depend on Microsoft). Our issue tracker is filled but only 
rarely someone is working on reported issues. So adding another 
/dev/null device won't change the most pressing problems of OI.
As I have written several times already: we lack maintainers. Depending 
on how one counts them we only have approximately 3 to 15 active 
maintainers. Most of them are focussed on a single or few areas of 
interest. So we have a lot of packages that are problematic for one 
reason or another without someone willing to fix them.
It won't help to get more reports on problems without people working on 
fixing them.

I recently talked about packaging chromium with Geoff, our maintainer 
for firefox, thunderbird and libreoffice.
He told me that FreeBSD pays a high price for having it packaged; they 
have more than 1000 patches to make it work on FreeBSD. Even after an 
initial port the amount of work that would be needed to keep it updated 
would exceed all our existing resources.

At the moment I merge PR's without issue tracker reports or links 
because the number of PR's is so low and forcing people into a more 
sophisticating process would even lower that small number.
>
> Same for https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate
>
> On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 6:36 AM Andreas Wacknitz via oi-dev 
> <oi-dev at openindiana.org> wrote:
>
>     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.
>
>
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> oi-dev at openindiana.org
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