1y ago

Mozilla will move Firefox development from Mercurial to Microsoft’s GitHub

devclass.com /2023/11/07/mozilla-will-move-firefox-development-from-mercurial-to-microsofts-github/

63 comments

Moving to git is nice but I don't understand why they don't self-host a gitlab instance.
- Imho the main argument for github is that it lowers the hurdle for new ane ad-hoc contributions like issues. I'm problably too lazy to registsr a new account for your instance just to open a bug report.
  I'd love a federated git/issue/wiki thing
  
  Are they moving issues or just code storage to GitHub?
  
  It wouldn't make it more difficult than with mercurial, which isn't supported by github either.
  
  They're going to continue using Bugzilla for bug reports.
  
  GitHub will just serve as code mirror. Patches and bugs will still go through Mozilla's usually channels.
  
  In my opinion that sounds like a plus. People that are too lazy to register an account to put in a code merge request or report a bug aren't going to be writing quality code or quality bug reports.
- but I don’t understand why they don’t self-host
  Why would anyone self-host a FLOSS project? Trade secrets is not a concern, nor is it barring access to the source code repository. Why would anyone waste their resources managing a service that adds no value beyond a third-party service like GitHub?
  
  Because Microsoft will eat your ass in your sleep
  
  Because while you do have control (and "copies") of the source code repository, that's not really true for the ecosystem around it - tickets, pull requests, ...
  If Microsoft decided to fuck you over you'd have a hard time migrating the "community" around that source code somewhere else.
  Obviously depends on what features you are using, but for example losing all tickets would be problematic for any projects.
  Apparently Mozilla won't be even accepting PRs there so it doesn't matter much.
- Or, you know, Gitea or such.
  
  I keep hearing people only on Lemmy bring up Gitea but I haven't really heard of it otherwise. What's the appeal and what's keeping it locked away with the Lemmy community?
- Money most likely.
  
  I would doubt that. Github for organizations becomes rather expensive rather quickly if you want to retain some level of control, so I doubt Mozilla will opt for the minimum "free for open source" offering.

Slightly confusing title here. A less confusing title would be "Mozilla drops support for Mercurial, moves Firefox repository to GitHub".
- A less confusing title would be “Mozilla drops support for Mercurial (...)
  It's not even about GitHub at all. Taken straight out of the announcement:
  “For a long time Firefox Desktop development has supported both Mercurial and Git users. This dual SCM requirement places a significant burden on teams which are already stretched thin in parts. We have made the decision to move Firefox development to Git.”
  
  But a few lines later:
  Although we'll be hosting the repository on GitHub, our contribution workflow will remain unchanged and we will not be accepting Pull Requests at this time
  So I don't know if you meant that the focus of the change wasn't GH or that they weren't using GH at all, but it seems like the latter is untrue.

The repository will be hosted on GitHub, though the move is expected to take “at least six months before the migration begins.”
Another major opensource project that chooses a proprietary hosting platform 🤷
- Let's be honest here, at least like 98% of the popular OSS is on GitHub at this point. You don't have to like it, but it's how things are
  
  Doesn't mean that they have to continue putting stuff there. But oh well, maybe once ForgeFed becomes a real thing, things might change a little.
  
  Open source was M$' archenemy that they knew they couldn't compete against. So they slithered in and co-opted it and everyone just ignores the perils and carries on.
- GitHub is just serving as public code mirror, it's not going to be their hosting platform.

Using and financially contributing to Codberg seems like a good next step to take. Doubt they will though.

Ah! 😣 Why not nest or self-hosted pijul!?
- It's not battle tested on massive projects nor does it have the prior mindshare git has. It doesn't have a lot of tooling either. (Does any CI/CD system support pijul?) It has nice properties, but ultimately git with all it's terrible warts is well understood.
  
  Seems to my mistake. You question is about CI/CD services that supports Pijul. So yes, almost zero. But it’s like ouroboros. Just use pijul more then git and talk about it, and services will support it soon.
  
  CI/CD
  Pijul as git or hg or any other is a VCS, so what are you talking about? If you mean web-service like GitHub with social things and CI/CD services, so yes, nest have CI/CD with nix. But mostly you shouldn’t host your huge project on the Nest because, as I’m absolutely sure, you as anyone other should create your own host (public or private) to support decentralization to prevent github-like centralization situation. Pijul was created with decentralization in first place in mind.
  Not tested with big projects in production
  Not publicly. Many private projects, personal and in-company, that uses pijul are existing. Personally I have one HUGE personal. Also I worked for two companies where pijul is used.
- Neither has reached 1.0. They're perpetually unstable.

Chromium has a mirror on GitHub and it's fine. While it feels a little strange to have just one mirror (on GitHub), after moving to git entirely, nobody is stopping to them from hosting a GitLab mirror.

Cool now I can actually check it out. Tried to previously but my connection failed about an hour into the clone. --depth=1 --shallow-submodules --recurse-submodules should really be given its own command in git. Not really sure why'd they choose MS as their host though.

63 comments