Mailing List Archive

FYI rt.cpan.org is going away
This isn't directly core's doing, nor problem, but I am attempting to
raise awareness of the situation because it seems nobody is aware or
talking about it.

****

rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
[1], is going to be shut down on 1st March this year [2]; 41 days
from when I write this email.

****

I am rather concerned about this, as there doesn't appear to be any
sort of co-ordinated bailout plan or migration of the *huge amount* of
CPAN modules this is about to affect.

I am furthermore concerned at the total lack of discussion or response
that has so far been generated; aside from Karen Etheridge I haven't
seen any noise of upset being generated at all. Nor am I aware of any
sort of effort to handle what will become a huge outage of a major
component of the CPAN ecosystem.

I personally have 189 modules in need of migration - somehow. As yet
I have no clue what I am going to do about it. Existing bugs need to be
moved somewhere else (and I have no clue how I'm going to fix up URLs
that currently point to those, in code comments, documentation, blog
posts, ... anywhere else), and a new for users to report new bugs needs
to exist. Of special note are the numerous "in progress" tickets I have
across my distributions, containing ongoing discussions about design
issues and the like. To say that I am "concerned" is an understatement;
I am fairly close to panicing about this.

I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there are
always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is going
to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.

I am therefore interested to know if

a) Perl5 Porters officially, and

b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
perl5-porters mailing list

have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan or
thoughts on continuing the service.


To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
that time.


1: Add the "known to be RT" and "unknown" categories of
https://cpan.rocks/; because metacpan.org defaults to RT in the
latter case.

2: https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Yes, am gravely concerned! I tried to raise this on committee (
https://perl.topicbox.com/groups/infrastructure/Te92859202f730470-M0ec0cd211f9dcd89a580957c/project-rt-cpan-org-static-hosting)
but didn't get anywhere. The best option at all would be to cancel the
decommissioning (or at least postpone to a much more reasonable timeline),
but I have been unable to even determine the motivations behind the
decision or identify what would be involved in keeping the service up.

I want to be clear that it is totally acceptable for a volunteer to decide
that they can't or won't have the time/energy/enthusiasm to continue a
task. Volunteer effort is greatly appreciated while it is there, but it
cannot be presumed to be provided in perpetuity. However, I find it greatly
distressing that the option for new volunteer(s) to step in and take over
is not being permitted. This is not something that can or should be decided
unilaterally.


On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 2:44 PM Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>
wrote:

> This isn't directly core's doing, nor problem, but I am attempting to
> raise awareness of the situation because it seems nobody is aware or
> talking about it.
>
> ****
>
> rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
> [1], is going to be shut down on 1st March this year [2]; 41 days
> from when I write this email.
>
> ****
>
> I am rather concerned about this, as there doesn't appear to be any
> sort of co-ordinated bailout plan or migration of the *huge amount* of
> CPAN modules this is about to affect.
>
> I am furthermore concerned at the total lack of discussion or response
> that has so far been generated; aside from Karen Etheridge I haven't
> seen any noise of upset being generated at all. Nor am I aware of any
> sort of effort to handle what will become a huge outage of a major
> component of the CPAN ecosystem.
>
> I personally have 189 modules in need of migration - somehow. As yet
> I have no clue what I am going to do about it. Existing bugs need to be
> moved somewhere else (and I have no clue how I'm going to fix up URLs
> that currently point to those, in code comments, documentation, blog
> posts, ... anywhere else), and a new for users to report new bugs needs
> to exist. Of special note are the numerous "in progress" tickets I have
> across my distributions, containing ongoing discussions about design
> issues and the like. To say that I am "concerned" is an understatement;
> I am fairly close to panicing about this.
>
> I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
> time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there are
> always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is going
> to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.
>
> I am therefore interested to know if
>
> a) Perl5 Porters officially, and
>
> b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
> perl5-porters mailing list
>
> have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan or
> thoughts on continuing the service.
>
>
> To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
> of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
> either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
> that time.
>
>
> 1: Add the "known to be RT" and "unknown" categories of
> https://cpan.rocks/; because metacpan.org defaults to RT in the
> latter case.
>
> 2: https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html
>
> --
> Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
>
> leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
> http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
>
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Hey Paul,


On 1/19/21 11:44 PM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
> This isn't directly core's doing, nor problem, but I am attempting to
> raise awareness of the situation because it seems nobody is aware or
> talking about it.
>
> ****
>
> rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
> [1], is going to be shut down on 1st March this year [2]; 41 days
> from when I write this email.
>
> ****
>
> I am rather concerned about this, as there doesn't appear to be any
> sort of co-ordinated bailout plan or migration of the *huge amount* of
> CPAN modules this is about to affect.
>
> I am furthermore concerned at the total lack of discussion or response
> that has so far been generated; aside from Karen Etheridge I haven't
> seen any noise of upset being generated at all. Nor am I aware of any
> sort of effort to handle what will become a huge outage of a major
> component of the CPAN ecosystem.
>
> I personally have 189 modules in need of migration - somehow. As yet
> I have no clue what I am going to do about it. Existing bugs need to be
> moved somewhere else (and I have no clue how I'm going to fix up URLs
> that currently point to those, in code comments, documentation, blog
> posts, ... anywhere else), and a new for users to report new bugs needs
> to exist. Of special note are the numerous "in progress" tickets I have
> across my distributions, containing ongoing discussions about design
> issues and the like. To say that I am "concerned" is an understatement;
> I am fairly close to panicing about this.


Without disregarding your concerns, there are both methods to move from
RT to GitHub (which the majority have done) and that rt.cpan will still
be readable so existing links will work, right? If so, does not that
alleviate some of your mentions issues above? (Specifically, existing
tickets need moving, links being fixed up in code, docs, and blog posts.)


New tickets, existing discussions, and any heavy usage of customized RT
tickets will clearly pose a problem.

> I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
> time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there are
> always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is going
> to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.
>
> I am therefore interested to know if
>
> a) Perl5 Porters officially, and
>
> b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
> perl5-porters mailing list
>
> have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan or
> thoughts on continuing the service.


This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
suggest Perl 5 Porters do?


> To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
> of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
> either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
> that time.
>
>
> 1: Add the "known to be RT" and "unknown" categories of
> https://cpan.rocks/; because metacpan.org defaults to RT in the
> latter case.
>
> 2: https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html
>
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:27:47 +0100
Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:

> Without disregarding your concerns, there are both methods to move
> from RT to GitHub (which the majority have done)

I'm not sure where you can quote "the majority" from.

E.g. https://cpan.rocks/ shows that a mere 20.9% of all CPAN modules
are using GitHub as their bugtracker. A total of 32.4% are using git of
some flavour for source control, though it doesn't give a breakdown on
what proportion of that is on github vs. other places.

*Even if* every distribution which hosts source code on github were to
migrate its bug tracker there too (and some people have those turned
off deliberately for whatever reason), this does not help the >= 67.6%
of distributions not hosted on any flavour of git. That's two thirds of
them.

Plus a lot of these non-github distributions haven't had releases in
*years*, maybe a decade or so. Are we going to track down every last
developer to get them to push a new update to CPAN with a new
bughosting URL in the distribution's metadata? Again my initial reason
for starting this email thread is I don't think many people are even
aware that this shutdown is going to happen.

There is also the question of where they should migrate to. I would feel
at the very least somewhat nervous about the entire Perl language
ecosystem saying "We give up, everyone must now use github for all their
bugtrackers". Individual projects and authors could decide to do that
but the fact that two thirds have not done so is at least some amount
of signal here. For the past 20-odd years, rt.cpan has been provided as
part of the whole bundle of "ecosystem stuff". We've now got two months
to airlift everyone off it onto something else - as yet still
unspecified what.

> and that rt.cpan
> will still be readable so existing links will work, right?

I haven't seen any mention that this will be the case. I saw someone
offering to set up some hosting for that, but there has been no firm
public statement that this will definitely happen.

> If so,
> does not that alleviate some of your mentions issues above?
> (Specifically, existing tickets need moving, links being fixed up in
> code, docs, and blog posts.)

A small amount, but not much.

> New tickets, existing discussions, and any heavy usage of customized
> RT tickets will clearly pose a problem.

Indeed. I still have links in places that point to currently-open bugs
that specifically request these be the places to hold discussions; e.g.
the TODO notes in

https://metacpan.org/pod/Future::AsyncAwait

or

https://metacpan.org/pod/Object::Pad

> > I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
> > time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there
> > are always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is
> > going to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.
> >
> > I am therefore interested to know if
> >
> > a) Perl5 Porters officially, and
> >
> > b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
> > perl5-porters mailing list
> >
> > have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan
> > or thoughts on continuing the service.
>
>
> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
> suggest Perl 5 Porters do?

I specifically said "response". I'm aware that P5P aren't in control of
this situation, but I also haven't heard any words of statement about
thoughts of it. Do we approve? Do we disapprove? Are we delighted,
unhappy - is anyone else in as much of a panic as I am?

Personally I find it very worrying that it seems like a single
volunteer can decide "I've given up, I'm turning this off", and nobody
worries about that situation. Of course people can decide to step down
and move on to other things, but they shouldn't be able to destroy a
major part of the CPAN ecosystem while they do so.

If it was threatened that PAUSE or metacpan.org were to be turned off
in a couple of months, would P5P just shrug and go "Ho hum", or would
there at least be noises and offers of "Hey, can we help, or find a
replacement by then?" It feels to me like a lot of people are at least
by inaction allowing this to be shut down.

I am trying to understand why.

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Hi again :)

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 5:28 PM Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
> suggest Perl 5 Porters do?

I volunteer as the "community outreach" person with Fosshost[1] which
is a UK based non-profit started in 2020. We provide no-cost virtual
machines, mirrors, CDN and other goodies to FOSS projects. If the
pain here could be lessened by having a one or a few VMs I would be
happy to request expedited review of an application.

Note, this does not address maintenance of the VM(s). Fosshost
volunteers are generally "hands-off" provided services and have
hypervisor but not VM access once things are provisioned.

[1] https://fosshost.org - overview, "brag rag" of supported projects,
and link to apply (webform, much javascript)

Cheers,
Corwin
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 18:10:37 -0600
Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st> wrote:

> Hi again :)
>
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 5:28 PM Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
> > suggest Perl 5 Porters do?
>
> I volunteer as the "community outreach" person with Fosshost[1] which
> is a UK based non-profit started in 2020. We provide no-cost virtual
> machines, mirrors, CDN and other goodies to FOSS projects. If the
> pain here could be lessened by having a one or a few VMs I would be
> happy to request expedited review of an application.

That could well be a handy offer that might help, or might not.
However, we on P5P aren't the source of the problem and can't comment
on what that might be.

The original announcement is here:

https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html

The quoted reasons being:

> rt.cpan.org will be sunset on March 1st, 2021 due to low and
> declining use.

That doesn't feel like the sort of situation that offering more hosting
hardware can help.

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:27:47 +0100, Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
> suggest Perl 5 Porters do?

Not sure if this is all possible in reality, but this is technically a feasible path forward.

1. See if we can find a different volunteer to take over rt.cpan.irg

2.a) See if we can find people to talk to said volunteer directly and convincingly. (e.g. someone who know the relevant person)
2.b) See if we can find people who can talk to said volunteer authoritatively. (e.g. whoever pays the server bill)

3. Ask people from 2. to convince said original volunteers to hand over maintenance to another volunteer instead of setting the thing on fire and throwing the keys away.

> If so, does not that alleviate some of your mentions issues above?

Only a miniscule part. The biggest issue is all the dists that won't get updated will suddenly have whatever well-meaning emails may come in drop into a black hole.

--
With regards,
Christian Walde
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 1:03 AM Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
<leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:27:47 +0100
> Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Without disregarding your concerns, there are both methods to move
> > from RT to GitHub (which the majority have done)
>
> I'm not sure where you can quote "the majority" from.
>
> E.g. https://cpan.rocks/ shows that a mere 20.9% of all CPAN modules
> are using GitHub as their bugtracker. A total of 32.4% are using git of
> some flavour for source control, though it doesn't give a breakdown on
> what proportion of that is on github vs. other places.
>
> *Even if* every distribution which hosts source code on github were to
> migrate its bug tracker there too (and some people have those turned
> off deliberately for whatever reason), this does not help the >= 67.6%
> of distributions not hosted on any flavour of git. That's two thirds of
> them.
>
> Plus a lot of these non-github distributions haven't had releases in
> *years*, maybe a decade or so. Are we going to track down every last
> developer to get them to push a new update to CPAN with a new
> bughosting URL in the distribution's metadata? Again my initial reason
> for starting this email thread is I don't think many people are even
> aware that this shutdown is going to happen.

Yeah, this. It's not that this can't be fixed, it's that the amount of
work for the community is huge. We're literally talking about
re-releasing tens of thousands of distributions, by thousands of
authors. For me it means migrating and re-releasing ±85 dists.

Leon
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 01:28:41 +0100, Leon Timmermans <fawaka@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 1:03 AM Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
> <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:
>> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:27:47 +0100
>> Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Without disregarding your concerns, there are both methods to move
>> > from RT to GitHub (which the majority have done)
>>
>> I'm not sure where you can quote "the majority" from.
>>
>> E.g. https://cpan.rocks/ shows that a mere 20.9% of all CPAN modules
>> are using GitHub as their bugtracker. A total of 32.4% are using git of
>> some flavour for source control, though it doesn't give a breakdown on
>> what proportion of that is on github vs. other places.
>>
>> *Even if* every distribution which hosts source code on github were to
>> migrate its bug tracker there too (and some people have those turned
>> off deliberately for whatever reason), this does not help the >= 67.6%
>> of distributions not hosted on any flavour of git. That's two thirds of
>> them.
>>
>> Plus a lot of these non-github distributions haven't had releases in
>> *years*, maybe a decade or so. Are we going to track down every last
>> developer to get them to push a new update to CPAN with a new
>> bughosting URL in the distribution's metadata? Again my initial reason
>> for starting this email thread is I don't think many people are even
>> aware that this shutdown is going to happen.
>
> Yeah, this. It's not that this can't be fixed, it's that the amount of
> work for the community is huge. We're literally talking about
> re-releasing tens of thousands of distributions, by thousands of
> authors. For me it means migrating and re-releasing ?85 dists.
>
> Leon
>

And there is no technical solution to prevent the data loss if rt.cpan.org goes away that isn't iffy on legal and moral grounds.

--
With regards,
Christian Walde
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 01:27:16 +0100
"Christian Walde" <walde.christian@gmail.com> wrote:

> > If so, does not that alleviate some of your mentions issues above?
>
> Only a miniscule part. The biggest issue is all the dists that won't
> get updated will suddenly have whatever well-meaning emails may come
> in drop into a black hole.

Yes - let us not forget that choosing to migrate to a new bugtracker is
up to the dist's author, as a service to the users of that dist who may
report bugs.

If nothing else happens and this shutdown goes ahead as planned on
1st March, that will leave *thousands* of distributions with no
bugtracker at all. What are users who wish to report bugs going to do
at that point? Often the bugtracker is their only means of contact with
the upstream author. If that breaks - well they can't even report the
bug that the bugtracker is now broken, can they? ;)

It is *imperative* that after 1st March, there should be *some* kind of
user->author communication ability to cover all those dists who haven't
specified any other means of handling it. Otherwise, 80% of all CPAN
distributions become - quite literally - unsupported.

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Hey Bryan,

I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any chance you can tell is what the situation on your end is?

--
With regards,
Christian Walde

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 23:44:25 +0100, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:

> This isn't directly core's doing, nor problem, but I am attempting to
> raise awareness of the situation because it seems nobody is aware or
> talking about it.
>
> ****
>
> rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
> [1], is going to be shut down on 1st March this year [2]; 41 days
> from when I write this email.
>
> ****
>
> I am rather concerned about this, as there doesn't appear to be any
> sort of co-ordinated bailout plan or migration of the *huge amount* of
> CPAN modules this is about to affect.
>
> I am furthermore concerned at the total lack of discussion or response
> that has so far been generated; aside from Karen Etheridge I haven't
> seen any noise of upset being generated at all. Nor am I aware of any
> sort of effort to handle what will become a huge outage of a major
> component of the CPAN ecosystem.
>
> I personally have 189 modules in need of migration - somehow. As yet
> I have no clue what I am going to do about it. Existing bugs need to be
> moved somewhere else (and I have no clue how I'm going to fix up URLs
> that currently point to those, in code comments, documentation, blog
> posts, ... anywhere else), and a new for users to report new bugs needs
> to exist. Of special note are the numerous "in progress" tickets I have
> across my distributions, containing ongoing discussions about design
> issues and the like. To say that I am "concerned" is an understatement;
> I am fairly close to panicing about this.
>
> I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
> time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there are
> always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is going
> to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.
>
> I am therefore interested to know if
>
> a) Perl5 Porters officially, and
>
> b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
> perl5-porters mailing list
>
> have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan or
> thoughts on continuing the service.
>
>
> To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
> of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
> either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
> that time.
>
>
> 1: Add the "known to be RT" and "unknown" categories of
> https://cpan.rocks/; because metacpan.org defaults to RT in the
> latter case.
>
> 2: https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
> On 1/19/21 11:44 PM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:

> > To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
> > of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
> > either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
> > that time.

On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 12:27:47AM +0100, Sawyer X wrote:
> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you suggest
> Perl 5 Porters do?

Can we estimate what the cost would be to *hire* someone
to administer the existing system?

Perhaps donations could support this resource until we have
a smooth path forward? I, for one, would contribute.

Can the Perl Foundation receive funds for this purpose?
I think many in the community would pony up to help.

--
Joel Roth
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On 1/20/21 4:25 AM, Joel Roth wrote:
>> On 1/19/21 11:44 PM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
>
>>> To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
>>> of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
>>> either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
>>> that time.
>
> On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 12:27:47AM +0100, Sawyer X wrote:
>> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you suggest
>> Perl 5 Porters do?
>
> Can we estimate what the cost would be to *hire* someone
> to administer the existing system?
>
> Perhaps donations could support this resource until we have
> a smooth path forward? I, for one, would contribute.
>
> Can the Perl Foundation receive funds for this purpose?
> I think many in the community would pony up to help.


Indeed. If there is a straight-forward solution which involves putting
in a reasonably amount of money, it's not a problem, it's an expense. I,
too, will donate.

--
Eric Herman
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
> On 2021-01-20 01:41:25, Christian Walde wrote:
>
> I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any chance you
> can tell is what the situation on your end is?

Robert kindly gave me access to the VM running RT currently, and I started
poking a few weeks ago, but work is currently consuming about 12 hours of every
day, and my kids whatever's left. :-)

My goal is to get it migrated into some portable state this weekend, and then
talk about where a more permanent home might be once I have it running. I'm
happy to update this thread with progress in a few days.

Cheers.
--
bdha
RE: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Hi Bryan,

Thank you for including me on this. Obviously your real life must take priority!

Would there be a way to open up access a bit to the information on a read-only basis? If you wanted to express requirements in a way so people could jump in and help you, I am confident there would be a lot of takers!

Best regards,
Ed

From: Bryan Horstmann-Allen<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>
Sent: 21 January 2021 22:25
To: Christian Walde<mailto:walde.christian@gmail.com>
Cc: Perl5 Porters<mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>; "Paul "LeoNerd" Evans"<mailto:leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>; Bryan Horstmann-Allen<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>; ej_zg@hotmail.com<mailto:ej_zg@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away

> On 2021-01-20 01:41:25, Christian Walde wrote:
>
> I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any chance you
> can tell is what the situation on your end is?

Robert kindly gave me access to the VM running RT currently, and I started
poking a few weeks ago, but work is currently consuming about 12 hours of every
day, and my kids whatever's left. :-)

My goal is to get it migrated into some portable state this weekend, and then
talk about where a more permanent home might be once I have it running. I'm
happy to update this thread with progress in a few days.

Cheers.
--
bdha
RE: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
Additionally: those interested folks I alluded to, many are on the IRC #london.pm on irc.perl.org. If you were to join that at least for this period, that would be a medium to hopefully get instant interaction with motivated potential helpers.

From: Ed .<mailto:ej_zg@hotmail.com>
Sent: 21 January 2021 22:44
To: bryan@pobox.com<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>; Christian Walde<mailto:walde.christian@gmail.com>
Cc: Perl5 Porters<mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>; "Paul "LeoNerd" Evans"<mailto:leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>; Bryan Horstmann-Allen<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>
Subject: RE: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away

Hi Bryan,

Thank you for including me on this. Obviously your real life must take priority!

Would there be a way to open up access a bit to the information on a read-only basis? If you wanted to express requirements in a way so people could jump in and help you, I am confident there would be a lot of takers!

Best regards,
Ed

From: Bryan Horstmann-Allen<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>
Sent: 21 January 2021 22:25
To: Christian Walde<mailto:walde.christian@gmail.com>
Cc: Perl5 Porters<mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>; "Paul "LeoNerd" Evans"<mailto:leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>; Bryan Horstmann-Allen<mailto:bryan@pobox.com>; ej_zg@hotmail.com<mailto:ej_zg@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away

> On 2021-01-20 01:41:25, Christian Walde wrote:
>
> I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any chance you
> can tell is what the situation on your end is?

Robert kindly gave me access to the VM running RT currently, and I started
poking a few weeks ago, but work is currently consuming about 12 hours of every
day, and my kids whatever's left. :-)

My goal is to get it migrated into some portable state this weekend, and then
talk about where a more permanent home might be once I have it running. I'm
happy to update this thread with progress in a few days.

Cheers.
--
bdha
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 21 Jan 2021 17:24:58 -0500
Bryan Horstmann-Allen <bryan@pobox.com> wrote:

> > On 2021-01-20 01:41:25, Christian Walde wrote:
> >
> > I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any
> > chance you can tell is what the situation on your end is?
>
> Robert kindly gave me access to the VM running RT currently, and I
> started poking a few weeks ago, but work is currently consuming about
> 12 hours of every day, and my kids whatever's left. :-)
>
> My goal is to get it migrated into some portable state this weekend,
> and then talk about where a more permanent home might be once I have
> it running. I'm happy to update this thread with progress in a few
> days.

If you need any more emergency assistance please feel free to prod me.
Perl literally is my fulltime job these days, so if getting more hands
on things would help I'd be happy to lend them.

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 21 Jan 2021 23:24:58 +0100, Bryan Horstmann-Allen <bryan@pobox.com> wrote:

>> On 2021-01-20 01:41:25, Christian Walde wrote:
>>
>> I remember you being in talks about the below topic. Is there any chance you
>> can tell is what the situation on your end is?
>
> Robert kindly gave me access to the VM running RT currently, and I started
> poking a few weeks ago, but work is currently consuming about 12 hours of every
> day, and my kids whatever's left. :-)
>
> My goal is to get it migrated into some portable state this weekend, and then
> talk about where a more permanent home might be once I have it running. I'm
> happy to update this thread with progress in a few days.
>
> Cheers.

That is absolutely amazing news to us here and the entire perl toolchain and thousands of authors who may not end up forced to do rereleases.

Thank you so much.

And, whatever help you might end up needing, please do let us know. :)

--
With regards,
Christian Walde
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 2:44 PM Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>
wrote:

>
> rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
>
>
To be blunt, this statistic is not correct.

It depends on your definition of "used", but for my definition of "used"
it's much smaller -- in the low single digit %s.

You may feel disproportionately affected because you have a lot of
modules. The statistics tell me that the vast majority of them have never
had a bug filed against them.

-R
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Sat, 23 Jan 2021 19:16:32 +0100, Robert Spier <rspier@pobox.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 2:44 PM Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> rt.cpan.org, the bugtracker used by nearly 80% of all CPAN modules
>>
>
> To be blunt, this statistic is not correct.
>
> It depends on your definition of "used", but for my definition of "used" it's much smaller -- in the low single digit >%s.
>
> You may feel disproportionately affected because you have a lot of modules. The statistics tell me that the vast >majority of them have never had a bug filed against them.
>
> -R

"Used" in this case is factually anything which may ever receive a mail that way, because any other definition provokes data loss, and the one thing that cannot be abided is data loss.

If you could demonstrate that data loss would not happen with a certainty approaching guarantee, that would be a convincing argument.

--
With regards,
Christian Walde
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On 1/20/21 1:02 AM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:27:47 +0100
> Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Without disregarding your concerns, there are both methods to move
>> from RT to GitHub (which the majority have done)
> I'm not sure where you can quote "the majority" from.
>
> E.g. https://cpan.rocks/ shows that a mere 20.9% of all CPAN modules
> are using GitHub as their bugtracker. A total of 32.4% are using git of
> some flavour for source control, though it doesn't give a breakdown on
> what proportion of that is on github vs. other places.


I meant that for people who moved elsewhere already, the single largest
hosting provider is GitHub.


>
> *Even if* every distribution which hosts source code on github were to
> migrate its bug tracker there too (and some people have those turned
> off deliberately for whatever reason), this does not help the >= 67.6%
> of distributions not hosted on any flavour of git. That's two thirds of
> them.


This isn't accurate. I refer to this further down, but to create the
context, those 67% are not about "this isn't hosted on any flavor of
Git" but I believe it's "we don't know of any public hosting of this
repository." The author might host it in an unidentified one, not link
to it, or host it privately (whether versioned or not).


>
> Plus a lot of these non-github distributions haven't had releases in
> *years*, maybe a decade or so. Are we going to track down every last
> developer to get them to push a new update to CPAN with a new
> bughosting URL in the distribution's metadata? Again my initial reason
> for starting this email thread is I don't think many people are even
> aware that this shutdown is going to happen.
>
> There is also the question of where they should migrate to. I would feel
> at the very least somewhat nervous about the entire Perl language
> ecosystem saying "We give up, everyone must now use github for all their
> bugtrackers". Individual projects and authors could decide to do that
> but the fact that two thirds have not done so is at least some amount
> of signal here. For the past 20-odd years, rt.cpan has been provided as
> part of the whole bundle of "ecosystem stuff". We've now got two months
> to airlift everyone off it onto something else - as yet still
> unspecified what.


I think it's really unfair to view this as "the entire Perl language
ecosystem saying 'we give up, everyone must now use github [...]'." You
had volunteers who provided a service. That service - while is still
useful for some - is no longer even remotely worthwhile maintaining for
those volunteers. That's it. "The Perl Language" has not "given up" or
has told anyone where to go and what to do.


I'm not saying RT isn't useful. I think there is a set of scenarios in
which RT is useful:


1. Posting patches for unmaintained code.

2. A ticket system when an author does not host their code publicly.
(The 67%, of which we don't know how much is actually used or useful.)

3. Based on your comments below, using RT as a form of CPAN::Forum.

4. Having discussions with unauthenticated users via email.


The way I see it:


1. Yeah, this sucks. Is it enough to keep it running? Not IMHO.

2. Sure, if the overhead is low. It isn't. It's money not well spent.
There are numerous ticket system to use, many for free.

3. See #2.

4. I think this is a very small "nice-to-have" for a *really* big cost.


I don't know if I'm missing more use-cases that fall under these, but I
think the bigger question is not whether we all agree on the benefits or
comments on them, but rather how we deal with the existing situation.
That's aside from when RT is useful or not.


I think the strongest reason that comes up here is "it existed so it
must continue to exist" and not "this serves a purpose nothing else can
or should." I strongly disagree with the latter. Neither of these
reasons are going to make NOC continue maintaining it. I doubt there is
anyone else who would properly maintain it, given the amount of time it
requires and for the little gain it provides nowadays.


>
>> and that rt.cpan
>> will still be readable so existing links will work, right?
> I haven't seen any mention that this will be the case. I saw someone
> offering to set up some hosting for that, but there has been no firm
> public statement that this will definitely happen.


Okay, this I interpreted from the post. We don't actually know this,
you're right.


>
>> If so,
>> does not that alleviate some of your mentions issues above?
>> (Specifically, existing tickets need moving, links being fixed up in
>> code, docs, and blog posts.)
> A small amount, but not much.
>
>> New tickets, existing discussions, and any heavy usage of customized
>> RT tickets will clearly pose a problem.
> Indeed. I still have links in places that point to currently-open bugs
> that specifically request these be the places to hold discussions; e.g.
> the TODO notes in
>
> https://metacpan.org/pod/Future::AsyncAwait
>
> or
>
> https://metacpan.org/pod/Object::Pad


I think there's a problem here in the expectations. You're assuming that
a ticket system be used as a forum. Just because you use it as such does
not mean that you can depend on it for it. I understand your concerns
are much greater because of how you use RT.


>
>>> I am quite sure I am but the smallest tip of the iceberg here. Every
>>> time I mention it on Freenode's #perl or irc.perl.org's #p5p there
>>> are always new folks who were totally unaware of this fact. This is
>>> going to hit lots of people in a very hard surprise.
>>>
>>> I am therefore interested to know if
>>>
>>> a) Perl5 Porters officially, and
>>>
>>> b) Individual CPAN authors who happen to subscribe to the
>>> perl5-porters mailing list
>>>
>>> have any sort of response to this; any kind of mass-migration plan
>>> or thoughts on continuing the service.
>>
>> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
>> suggest Perl 5 Porters do?
> I specifically said "response". I'm aware that P5P aren't in control of
> this situation, but I also haven't heard any words of statement about
> thoughts of it. Do we approve?


Approve? We don't have a say in it. Someone who is not us has given 17
years of their life to maintain it and they want to stop. What do you
mean, do we approve?


> Do we disapprove? Are we delighted,
> unhappy - is anyone else in as much of a panic as I am?


Some are as concerned as you are, some aren't as concerned. I don't
think anyone is delighted in it being stopped. I can tell you I'm not
surprised.


>
> Personally I find it very worrying that it seems like a single
> volunteer can decide "I've given up, I'm turning this off", and nobody
> worries about that situation. Of course people can decide to step down
> and move on to other things, but they shouldn't be able to destroy a
> major part of the CPAN ecosystem while they do so.


These people received no money, barely any recognition, zero support,
had to deal with a ton of crap because they care. Now that they can't
continue doing it, it turned into "you shouldn't be allowed to do that."


>
> If it was threatened that PAUSE or metacpan.org were to be turned off
> in a couple of months, would P5P just shrug and go "Ho hum", or would
> there at least be noises and offers of "Hey, can we help, or find a
> replacement by then?" It feels to me like a lot of people are at least
> by inaction allowing this to be shut down.


Very, very different situation.


RT has numerous alternatives, many of which serve its purposes far
better. PAUSE is *the* only interface. It also has several active
contributors trying to help maintain it. (Whether it's easy or not, I
don't dare venture.) If RT goes down, uploads and downloads are
available, MetaCPAN and its API is available, testing is available, etc.
You just won't be able to post an issue to RT or view something that was
only in RT. If, as the NOC post mentioned, the data will be available,
then it's just opening or responding to tickets that are on RT. That's
the only disruption. Whether it's big or small for you is another
matter, but definitely not the comparison of RT to PAUSE.
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On 1/20/21 1:41 AM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 01:27:16 +0100
> "Christian Walde" <walde.christian@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> If so, does not that alleviate some of your mentions issues above?
>> Only a miniscule part. The biggest issue is all the dists that won't
>> get updated will suddenly have whatever well-meaning emails may come
>> in drop into a black hole.
> Yes - let us not forget that choosing to migrate to a new bugtracker is
> up to the dist's author, as a service to the users of that dist who may
> report bugs.
>
> If nothing else happens and this shutdown goes ahead as planned on
> 1st March, that will leave *thousands* of distributions with no
> bugtracker at all. What are users who wish to report bugs going to do
> at that point?


They will need to:


1. Look at the documentation and search for "reporting a bug."

2. Reach out to the author via their email. If the author has a public
hosting, they will likely point them there.

3. Search for the project on a hosting provider.


Many people jump to #3 because it could yield a faster response, myself
included.


In any case, these are the normal steps when wanting to report a bug on
a project.



> Often the bugtracker is their only means of contact with
> the upstream author. If that breaks - well they can't even report the
> bug that the bugtracker is now broken, can they? ;)


If the author wants bugs reported, they will include information on how
to do this or will respond in their email.


>
> It is *imperative* that after 1st March, there should be *some* kind of
> user->author communication ability to cover all those dists who haven't
> specified any other means of handling it. Otherwise, 80% of all CPAN
> distributions become - quite literally - unsupported.


Again, there is. These authors can provide information on how to report
bugs and they can respond to emails.


Put differently, if an author doesn't provide any information on how to
report bugs and refuses to respond to emails (or even has an
unresponsive email), then... do they really want to receive your tickets?


>
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On 1/20/21 11:34 PM, Eric Herman wrote:
> On 1/20/21 4:25 AM, Joel Roth wrote:
>>> On 1/19/21 11:44 PM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
>>
>>>> To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
>>>> of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
>>>> either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a
>>>> solution in
>>>> that time.
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 12:27:47AM +0100, Sawyer X wrote:
>>> This is infrastructure maintained by NOC volunteers. What would you
>>> suggest
>>> Perl 5 Porters do?
>>
>> Can we estimate what the cost would be to *hire* someone
>> to administer the existing system?
>>
>> Perhaps donations could support this resource until we have
>> a smooth path forward? I, for one, would contribute.
>>
>> Can the Perl Foundation receive funds for this purpose?
>> I think many in the community would pony up to help.
>
>
> Indeed. If there is a straight-forward solution which involves putting
> in a reasonably amount of money, it's not a problem, it's an expense.
> I, too, will donate.


This assumes on a major benefit to this expenditure. I personally doubt
the benefit outweighs the cost.
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 7:17 PM Robert Spier <rspier@pobox.com> wrote:
> To be blunt, this statistic is not correct.
>
> It depends on your definition of "used", but for my definition of "used" it's much smaller -- in the low single digit %s.
>
> You may feel disproportionately affected because you have a lot of modules. The statistics tell me that the vast majority of them have never had a bug filed against them.

That argument boils down to "people aren't filing enough bugs against
CPAN modules, therefore a bug tracker isn't necessary". The ecosystem
is relatively rich in mature modules, so of course there will be few
new bug reports. And pervasive support of a bug tracker was essential
to get there.

Don't get me wrong, if you don't feel like it's a useful use of your
time because of this then that's entirely valid, but for downstream
users and especially packagers for example it is absolutely essential
that every package has a public bugtracker. Losing that would be felt
by a lot of people, authors and users alike.

Can we achieve the same without rt.cpan.org? Of course, but that would
be a lot more work than rt.cpan.org in the air.

Leon
Re: FYI rt.cpan.org is going away [ In reply to ]
> On Jan 24, 2021, at 07:20, Leon Timmermans <fawaka@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> it is absolutely essential
> that every package has a public bugtracker.

What about a PrePAN-like setup where GitHub becomes the bug tracker for anything that lacks something else? Then folks can keep posting patches, etc.

-F

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