[FFmpeg-devel] GitHub Integration

[Soft Works]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel-bounces at ffmpeg.org> On Behalf Of Ronald S.
> Bultje
> Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2021 10:38 PM
> To: FFmpeg development discussions and patches <ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org>
> Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] GitHub Integration
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Dec 26, 2021 at 3:21 PM Soft Works <softworkz at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure. My interpretation of Lance' and Steven's comments would
> > be that they'd prefer to stick to the ML.
> >
> 
> No, it's not strictly related to that - they want something that is CLI
> accessible. Gitlab has this here: https://glab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
> and github has this here: https://github.com/cli/cli - the next question is
> whether the gitlab/hub hosts are blocked by a firewall (no idea) and/or
> whether the instances are self-hosted (github: no, gitlab-videolan: yes).

Agreed. For the submission part, there are CLI options in both cases.
Also true for both cases: the discussion part would change to WWW.

But I'm probably the very last one here to advocate staying with the ML.
Even though I'd prefer GitHub, I would welcome a move to GitLab as well,
and when something like GitGitGadget would have existed for GitLab instead
of GitHub, then I would have adopted that instead.

Looking back at the discussion in August, where I made these suggestions,
a lot of developers had responded, indicating their satisfaction with the
ML approach (some even defending it strongly). Just very few indicated
support for a move to either GitHub or GitLab.

Off-list, I've seen some who were claiming that a majority would exist,
favoring a move to GitLab. That would be great, but I'm not seeing it.
Where is that majority and why do so few of them speak up, then?

After reading the ML for several years, and from what I've learned about
the group interaction dynamics, my assessment is, that a migration
away from the ML is unlikely to happen in a short-term future.
Those who don't want to move are just on standby, waiting for the next
attempt to be made in order to turn it down once again, and those who
would like to move, are sufficiently satisfied by the thought
alone that a move to GitLab would happen "soon". 
Most likely, by the end of 2022, the situation will just be the same.

On the other side, the "GitHub Gateway/Integration" with the 
ffmpeg-codebot is available right now and able to bridge
the gap between ML and more modern and integrated development workflows.
It's not meant to replace, avoid or compete with an actual migration,
and when a migration would happen e.g. to GitLab, it will be still useful
to have a bot on GitHub that either mirrors PRs from GitHub or just 
auto-closes them with an appropriate message.

Somebody said on IRC that the GH integration might only delay a real 
migration away from the ML.
But I'm seeing it somewhat differently: this might rather serve as an 
indication for which approach will be preferred by the majority, maybe
even accelerating a final migration.

Kind regards,
softworkz