Moving guix-science from GitHub?

Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Currently Guix-Science{,-nonfree} are on GitHub, which is not great for
obvious reasons, and also because there’s no CI integration.

Thanks to Romain, Cuirass recently gained support for GitLab
integration, so it would be tempting to move to a public GitLab instance
such as gitlab.com.  One could also implement GitHub support without too
much hassle (maybe?), but is it worth it?

But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?  (I believe a prerequisite
for the intended audience is to have something that looks similar to
Git{Hub,Lab}, which is why I’m not suggesting the use of sr.ht.)

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Mon, 2 Sept 2024 at 15:42, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> wrote:

> Thanks to Romain, Cuirass recently gained support for GitLab
> integration

Oh cool!  Thank you Romain.

>              so it would be tempting to move to a public GitLab instance
> such as gitlab.com

[...]

> But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
> not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?

Is Cuirass also integrated with codeberg.org?  Maybe I have missed
something, from my understanding, codeberg.org depends forgejo which is
not related to Gitlab.

Well, if the motivation is to move from GitHub because of missing CI,
then the new forge must have integrated CI. ;-)

Otherwise, I do not have any opinion where the guix-science channel shoudl live.

Cheers,
simon

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Konrad Hinsen]

Hi everyone,

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

>> But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
>> not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?
>
> Is Cuirass also integrated with codeberg.org?  Maybe I have missed
> something, from my understanding, codeberg.org depends forgejo which is
> not related to Gitlab.

Indeed. It does have CI:

   https://docs.codeberg.org/ci/

but it's probably not Gitlab-compatible.

But then, given that moving has a high cost (for the reasons pointed out
by Ricardo), we should take a long-term perspective. I expect forĝejo to
be a more interesting platform in the long run, both technically
(Fediverse) and socially (not for profit).

Questions:

 1. How much effort would it be to implement forĝejo support in Cuirass?

 2. In view of federated forges, which facilitate some aspects of moving
    between forges, maintaining mirrors, etc., could we come up with
    a way to make Guix channels easier to relocate, and/or have multiple
    URLs?

Cheers,
  Konrad.
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen
Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS Orléans
Synchrotron Soleil - Division Expériences
Saint Aubin - BP 48
91192 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France
Tel. +33-1 69 35 97 15
E-Mail: konrad DOT hinsen AT cnrs DOT fr
http://dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/~hinsen/
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0330-9428
Mastodon: @khinsen@scholar.social
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Saluton!

Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen@cnrs.fr> skribis:

> But then, given that moving has a high cost (for the reasons pointed out
> by Ricardo), we should take a long-term perspective. I expect forĝejo to
> be a more interesting platform in the long run, both technically
> (Fediverse) and socially (not for profit).

Yes, that was also my feeling.

>  1. How much effort would it be to implement forĝejo support in Cuirass?

Not too much, as I wrote.

>  2. In view of federated forges, which facilitate some aspects of moving
>     between forges, maintaining mirrors, etc., could we come up with
>     a way to make Guix channels easier to relocate, and/or have multiple
>     URLs?

Authentication and downgrade prevention make it safe to use a mirror,
and the other thing is that channels advertise their “primary URL”,
which allows you to know when you’re using a mirror (or when the channel
has moved).  And then there’s SWH fall back when a commit ID is
available.

So there are pieces in place, but it would be nice to extend that
somehow so we can gradually abstract away the actual storage location.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Mi ekkomprenis nur hodiaŭ la nomon “forĝejo”! :-)

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> skribis:

> Is Cuirass also integrated with codeberg.org?  Maybe I have missed
> something, from my understanding, codeberg.org depends forgejo which is
> not related to Gitlab.

Cuirass doesn’t support forgejo yet.  It’s different from what GitLab
provides but very similar:

  https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/webhooks/

Supporting it wouldn’t be too much work.

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi,

Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> writes:

> Currently Guix-Science{,-nonfree} are on GitHub, which is not great for
> obvious reasons, and also because there’s no CI integration.
>
> Thanks to Romain, Cuirass recently gained support for GitLab
> integration,

Superb!

> so it would be tempting to move to a public GitLab instance
> such as gitlab.com.  One could also implement GitHub support without too
> much hassle (maybe?), but is it worth it?
>
> But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
> not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?  (I believe a prerequisite
> for the intended audience is to have something that looks similar to
> Git{Hub,Lab}, which is why I’m not suggesting the use of sr.ht.)
>
> Thoughts?

I have two worries about migrating to another location:

- publications referencing a channel with URL
  https://github.com/guix-science/guix-science might break if we don't
  manage to set up a permanent redirect.

- I don't know if migration would be seamless for all users of the
  channel.  Obviously, we'd also have to update any channel that
  references guix-science (such as guix-science-nonfree).

We may also want to move guix-science-nonfree, guix-cran, and guix-bioc
while we're at it.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:

>> But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
>> not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?  (I believe a prerequisite
>> for the intended audience is to have something that looks similar to
>> Git{Hub,Lab}, which is why I’m not suggesting the use of sr.ht.)
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> I have two worries about migrating to another location:
>
> - publications referencing a channel with URL
>   https://github.com/guix-science/guix-science might break if we don't
>   manage to set up a permanent redirect.

Publications that include a commit will be fine: Guix will fall back to
SWH.  You can try it for instance with:

  guix time-machine -q --url=http://example.org \
    --commit=deac7dd04156b9358ea33200593fd260760f9d91 -- \
    describe

That said, if we migrate, we should have a prominent human-readable
message at github.com if we cannot set up an actual redirect.

> - I don't know if migration would be seamless for all users of the
>   channel.  Obviously, we'd also have to update any channel that
>   references guix-science (such as guix-science-nonfree).

Right, that’s annoying and admittedly annoying.

Perhaps the repo at github.com could be in “archived” mode and still be
around though, as a way to minimize disruption for old code.

> We may also want to move guix-science-nonfree, guix-cran, and guix-bioc
> while we're at it.

Yes; we should keep them all together.

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Tue, 03 Sep 2024 at 09:50, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> wrote:

>> - publications referencing a channel with URL
>>   https://github.com/guix-science/guix-science might break if we don't
>>   manage to set up a permanent redirect.
>
> Publications that include a commit will be fine: Guix will fall back to
> SWH.

Yes, thanks to SWH, it should work out-of-the-box.  It still needs to be
carefully checked to avoid some “mismatch” when fetching back from the
Vault.

>> - I don't know if migration would be seamless for all users of the
>>   channel.  Obviously, we'd also have to update any channel that
>>   references guix-science (such as guix-science-nonfree).

Well, from my understanding, this opens 3 kinds of concern depending on
user’s profile:

 + channel contributor: I count 14+2 Pull Requests and most of them by
   people we collaborate.  Therefore, the migration would not be too
   disruptive for them.

 + direct channel user: The main issue is to reach them.  I mean, I
   barely go to guix-science GitHub webpage.  Then, at some points “guix
   pull” will break because some packages from Guix proper will not work
   with packages from Guix-Science.  Then, the reaction depends on
   user’s skill: from let investigate what happens to bah let drop it
   because that’s still broken.

 + dependant channel user: Similarly, the main issue is to reach them.
   However, since they maintain another channel, they will check at some
   point the GitHub webpage and thus will be redirected.

IMHO, the migration cost mainly comes from “direct channel user”.

Well, maybe we could come with a mechanism in order to inform the users.

We would put this “mechanism” inside the channel.  And when running
“guix pull”, the Scheme code of the channel is “processed” so we could
display a message, somehow.  Even, we could display the new location.

Plainly said, why not update .guix-channel format and add another field?

It would remove the migration cost, or almost.

WDYT?

Cheers,
simon

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> skribis:

>  + direct channel user: The main issue is to reach them.  I mean, I

I think we could (1) add a news entry in Guix-Science before migrating,
and (2) change the primary URL in ‘.guix-channel’.  With these two
things, people will notice.

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Lars-Dominik Braun]

Hi,

> - publications referencing a channel with URL
>   https://github.com/guix-science/guix-science might break if we don't
>   manage to set up a permanent redirect.

I believe it’s not possible to set up a permanent redirect to a project
outside of GitHub. However we could use the channel news feature to
announce the move and then archive the GitHub projects.

Lars

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Philippe SWARTVAGHER]

Le 04/09/2024 à 18:26, Lars-Dominik Braun a écrit :
> I believe it’s not possible to set up a permanent redirect to a project
> outside of GitHub. However we could use the channel news feature to
> announce the move and then archive the GitHub projects.

I was wondering: maybe ~~we~~ you could setup a mirror repository? The 
GitHub repository being a mirror of the new location of the repository. 
At least to smooth the migration in channel files.

-- 
Philippe SWARTVAGHER
Assistant Professor @ ENSEIRB-MATMECA
Research team Topal @ Inria Bordeaux-Sud Ouest

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Philippe SWARTVAGHER <philippe.swartvagher@inria.fr> skribis:

> Le 04/09/2024 à 18:26, Lars-Dominik Braun a écrit :
>> I believe it’s not possible to set up a permanent redirect to a project
>> outside of GitHub. However we could use the channel news feature to
>> announce the move and then archive the GitHub projects.
>
> I was wondering: maybe ~~we~~ you could setup a mirror repository? The
> GitHub repository being a mirror of the new location of the
> repository. At least to smooth the migration in channel files.

Yes, I guess it’s relatively easy to do and would make the transition
smoother.

Ludo’.

Re: Moving guix-science from GitHub?

[Cayetano Santos via Guix-Science]

>lun. 02 sept. 2024 at 15:41, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> wrote:

> But if we are to migrate, we might just as well migrate to a
> not-for-profit instance such as codeberg.org?  (I believe a prerequisite
> for the intended audience is to have something that looks similar to
> Git{Hub,Lab}, which is why I’m not suggesting the use of sr.ht.)

> Thoughts?

Regarding sr.ht, let me point out that sourcehut includes support for
builds. Among others, there is a guix system build image.

    https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/compatibility.md#guix-system

Not that this is a valid option to replace GitWhatever / Codeberg (as it
departs significantly from its phylosophy), but a mirror is something to
be considered as a mid/long term alternative.

Same as emacs, by the way ;-)

    https://git.sr.ht/~emacs/emacs

Best,

C.