Hi folks,

I took a look at our mirrored repositories on GitHub under
https://github.com/openembedded and considered the experience of new
potential contributors and others from outside our project community.
As many projects use GitHub Pull Requests to handle contributions, and
the "Pull Requests" feature of GitHub can't be disabled, people often
wrongly conclude that the way to contribute to the project is to open
a pull request. This is evident from the pull requests which have been
opened over the years on
https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/pulls and
https://github.com/openembedded/bitbake/pulls.

To someone unfamiliar with our project and our workflows, this can
give a bad impression. Potential contributors may be lost as their
pull requests usually don't get replied to. People trying to gauge the
activity of the project can get a bad impression from the number of
old pull requests left open with no comments.

I propose that we set up the "Repo Lockdown" GitHub App
(https://github.com/apps/repo-lockdown) for these repositories. With
this installed we can create a config repository in
https://github.com/openembedded/.github to set a helpful comment which
will then automatically posted as a reply to all new pull requests on
our mirrored repositories. This comment can redirect the contributor
to the correct submission process for OpenEmbedded (i.e. the mailing
lists) and provide a link to our contribution guidelines. The pull
request would then automatically be closed.

This is a one-time setup task and looks to be an easy win - it
shouldn't take up any of our time going forward but would help improve
how things look to folks who are only used to GitHub/GitLab web
interface based workflows. Hopefully that will bring in some new
contributors over time.

I'm happy to set this up and clean up the currently open pull requests
on these repositories but this would require admin permissions to
https://github.com/openembedded. If the OE TSC is happy to grant me
the relevant access I'll sort this out and try to help out with any
other admin required for the GitHub mirrors in the future (time
permitting).

Thanks,

--
Paul Barker
Konsulko Group

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 at 19:58, Paul Barker <pbarker@...> wrote:

Hi folks,

I took a look at our mirrored repositories on GitHub under
https://github.com/openembedded and considered the experience of new
potential contributors and others from outside our project community.
As many projects use GitHub Pull Requests to handle contributions, and
the "Pull Requests" feature of GitHub can't be disabled, people often
wrongly conclude that the way to contribute to the project is to open
a pull request. This is evident from the pull requests which have been
opened over the years on
https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/pulls and
https://github.com/openembedded/bitbake/pulls.

To someone unfamiliar with our project and our workflows, this can
give a bad impression. Potential contributors may be lost as their
pull requests usually don't get replied to. People trying to gauge the
activity of the project can get a bad impression from the number of
old pull requests left open with no comments.

I propose that we set up the "Repo Lockdown" GitHub App
(https://github.com/apps/repo-lockdown) for these repositories. With
this installed we can create a config repository in
https://github.com/openembedded/.github to set a helpful comment which
will then automatically posted as a reply to all new pull requests on
our mirrored repositories. This comment can redirect the contributor
to the correct submission process for OpenEmbedded (i.e. the mailing
lists) and provide a link to our contribution guidelines. The pull
request would then automatically be closed.

This is a one-time setup task and looks to be an easy win - it
shouldn't take up any of our time going forward but would help improve
how things look to folks who are only used to GitHub/GitLab web
interface based workflows. Hopefully that will bring in some new
contributors over time.

I'm happy to set this up and clean up the currently open pull requests
on these repositories but this would require admin permissions to
https://github.com/openembedded. If the OE TSC is happy to grant me
the relevant access I'll sort this out and try to help out with any
other admin required for the GitHub mirrors in the future (time
permitting).

Relevant discussion from #oe I forgot to include:

[2020-07-20 18:22:44] <khem> paulbarker: why do you want to lockdown
gh pulls ? is there a better way
[2020-07-20 18:23:18] <khem> often times people send pulls when they
cant get it going with email stuff for different reasons
[2020-07-20 18:23:21] <paulbarker> khem: The lockdown app allows you
to customise the automatic response so it can point people to the
proper way to submit patches
[2020-07-20 18:24:15] <paulbarker> For openembedded-core at least I
don't think pull requests are ever used
[2020-07-20 18:26:18] <khem> its good if a message is sent but pull
request is still catered
[2020-07-20 18:26:40] <khem> I would think hard locking will drive
these people away
[2020-07-20 18:32:49] <paulbarker> The alternative is what we have
now: https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/pulls
[2020-07-20 18:33:09] <paulbarker> Lots of pull requests left open,
very few with any comment on them
[2020-07-20 18:33:39] <paulbarker> We should comment to direct people
to the correct place and then close them or merge them
[2020-07-20 18:34:50] <paulbarker> All I'm proposing is automating
that for repositories where we don't use merge requests anyway
[2020-07-20 18:36:01] <paulbarker> Right now I think we're losing
people as they open a pull request and often don't see a response
[2020-07-20 18:36:47] <paulbarker> The project looks unhealthy if you
just open github as an OE newbie and look at the pull requests tab
assuming that's how all projects handle contributions, you see a long
list of old pull requests with very few comments and it looks bad
[2020-07-20 18:42:24] <khem> that I agree, I do address pulls for
meta-oe layers but not for core
[2020-07-20 18:43:50] <paulbarker> I think we should tidy up oe-core
and bitbake then and setup the lockdown app to auto comment and close
pull requests, directing folks to the mailing list and other resources
[2020-07-20 18:50:27] <kergoth> agreed
[2020-07-20 18:51:19] <JaMa> I agree, I used to just send the link to
wiki when I was maintaining meta-oe (and automated tool would be much
better and faster for that), khem does more and actually collects the
changes from PRs, but then the review process is more difficult as
original submitter probably follows just PR while most reviewers read
oe-devel ML
[2020-07-20 18:52:00] <JaMa> and forcing khem to gateway review
comments both ways as well is too much to ask
[2020-07-20 19:05:03] <khem> seems fine to me
[2020-07-20 19:05:31] <khem> I would think do it for all repos is more
appropriate and coherent
[2020-07-20 19:05:46] <khem> unless we follow gh workflow
[2020-07-20 19:33:36] <paulbarker> kergoth, JaMa, khem: Sounds good.
I'm happy to make it happen but I don't have admin rights to
https://github.com/openembedded. I'll post to the mailing list for
approval

Thanks,

--
Paul Barker
Konsulko Group

Hi Paul,

On Mon, 2020-07-20 at 19:58 +0100, Paul Barker wrote:

I took a look at our mirrored repositories on GitHub under
https://github.com/openembedded and considered the experience of new
potential contributors and others from outside our project community.
As many projects use GitHub Pull Requests to handle contributions,
and
the "Pull Requests" feature of GitHub can't be disabled, people often
wrongly conclude that the way to contribute to the project is to open
a pull request. This is evident from the pull requests which have
been
opened over the years on
https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/pulls and
https://github.com/openembedded/bitbake/pulls.

To someone unfamiliar with our project and our workflows, this can
give a bad impression. Potential contributors may be lost as their
pull requests usually don't get replied to. People trying to gauge
the
activity of the project can get a bad impression from the number of
old pull requests left open with no comments.

I propose that we set up the "Repo Lockdown" GitHub App
(https://github.com/apps/repo-lockdown) for these repositories. With
this installed we can create a config repository in
https://github.com/openembedded/.github to set a helpful comment
which
will then automatically posted as a reply to all new pull requests on
our mirrored repositories. This comment can redirect the contributor
to the correct submission process for OpenEmbedded (i.e. the mailing
lists) and provide a link to our contribution guidelines. The pull
request would then automatically be closed.

This is a one-time setup task and looks to be an easy win - it
shouldn't take up any of our time going forward but would help
improve
how things look to folks who are only used to GitHub/GitLab web
interface based workflows. Hopefully that will bring in some new
contributors over time.

I'm happy to set this up and clean up the currently open pull
requests
on these repositories but this would require admin permissions to
https://github.com/openembedded. If the OE TSC is happy to grant me
the relevant access I'll sort this out and try to help out with any
other admin required for the GitHub mirrors in the future (time
permitting).

The OE TSC had a meeting today and discussed this, we agreed it seemed
like a reasonable idea in principle and that you could go ahead and set
it up as it should be better than the current experience people have.
We think Philip can help with the permissions side of things on github.

Cheers,

Richard