[mat-dev] Eclipse Forums is being sunset

["Tsvetkov, Krum" <krum.tsvetkov@xxxxxxx>]

In the recent updates from the Eclipse IT below, the first point mentions that the forums will be sunset end of this year.

I’d like to ask for your opinions / ideas if and how we should deal with this change.

 

While there hasn’t been too much traffic on our forums, it has served in the past as a place where MAT users could ask their question and get help not only from the few MAT committers, but also from a wider community. Looking at the posts, I see less than 10 which were touched in 2024 – as said, not a huge amount. On the other hand, several of them have several thousand views, so I guess they did help some of the users.

 

I am just dumping here some of the options I’ve seen suggested and my thoughts on them. In general, I think that at this stage of the project it will be very difficult to attract a larger community to a new place, independent of where it is. I will be happy to get feedback.

 

1. No replacement, do nothing – yes, this is for me a valid option. As stated earlier, there hasn’t been a huge amount of traffic on the forum. I guess a natural place for many to ask a question for whatever technology is stack overflow. I do see there also (rather old) questions related to MAT which got answered.
2. A second mailing list, focused on users, e.g. mat-users@... – this would be easy to setup, but I doubt we will ever get some reasonable community on it, which would leave answering only to the committers
3. Eclipse Chat Service – I don’t know it yet but would claim it will follow a similar faith as the forums once we manage to attract some community to it. I don’t want to offend anyone (I am sure there is good reasons for all the infra changes), but the reality is that in the last year most of the very limited time I could dedicate to the project I spent on “Infra X will be sunset” topics – git, Bugzilla, website domains, php deprecation for web site
4. GitHub discussions – I don’t have my own experience using these. Is it too much to expect from end-users that they’ll find our project on github? And if they did, will there be anyone besides the committers to look at the questions?

 

Do you have any other suggestions? For now, I rather tend to go for 1 – simply accept the fact that the forums won’t be there and let users find their way via other existing channels – github issues & dev mailing list to reach to the committers, or stack overflow to as in the wilde.

 

Regards,

Krum

 

From: eclipse.org-committers <eclipse.org-committers-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Denis Roy via eclipse.org-committers <eclipse.org-committers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, 5. November 2024 at 20:51
To: Eclipse Committers <eclipse.org-committers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Denis Roy <denis.roy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [eclipse.org-committers] Eclipse IT update

Greetings committers and project leads, I have a relatively long but useful update for you.

 

1. Eclipse Forums is being sunset

A decade ago [0], we began the discussion about what to do with the Eclipse Forums as, with time, the underlying software has become stale and is now a serious security liability for the Foundation. After a decade of reluctance, the Forums will be sunset December 31, 2024.  

Please discuss with your community which location is best for user-centric discussions for your project. Some options include using the Eclipse Chat Service [1], GitHub Discussions that can be enabled for your project, or the creation of a user discussion mailing list. Please use a HelpDesk ticket [5] to request any needed resources for your project.

The Forums will be archived in read-only, static html format. More information can be found in the HelpDesk issue [0].

 

2. Git/Gerrit/Bugzilla deprecation status

The deprecation of Git/Gerrit & Bugzilla is on schedule, and at this time, the vast majority of projects have migrated off those platforms. The plan can be found here [2]

The infra team will create a (very large) static html copy of all Bugzilla bugs in the coming months.  Bugzilla sunset is slated for May 2025.

 

3. Jiro/CBI build infra updates

The Foundation's Releng team has been knee-deep in migrating Jenkins instances to a robust and scalable storage cluster (away from a single storage device operating beyond capacity) to help improve the service availability of the Common Build (CBI) Jenkins offering.

Although the migrations are not yet complete, we're already observing much needed stability improvements across all instances.  You can follow the effort here [3]

For more information on Eclipse Common Build, please see: https://github.com/eclipse-cbi/cbi/wiki

 

4. RISC V platform now available for builds

As detailed here [4] RISC V agents are available for builds in a very limited quantity for building native code. If you'd like to use the agents, please file a HelpDesk ticket [5].

 

5. Eclipse Chat Service

Did you know that the Foundation hosts a Chat Service. You can check it out at https://chat.eclipse.org/ and your project can request a room by filing a HelpDesk ticket [5].

 

6. Release Engineers take note

We encourage all project Release Engineers to subscribe to, and monitor the cross-project-issues-dev mailing list [6]. It is the primary mechanism used by the EF Releng team to communicate about CBI and build/releng issues in general.

 

7. New IT Service Level Objectives

The EF's IT Service Level Agreement (SLA) has been updated to reflect new realities in 2024, and has been renamed to Service Level Objectives. In short, we've removed Git/Gerrit/Bugzilla and other terminated (or deprecated services) and have added GitLab, the Eclipse Downloads area, the ECA and sync mechanisms as Critical or Best Effort Services.  You can consult the new SLO document at [7].

The Foundation is committed to providing a quality, robust and useful infrastructure and set of tools to allow you to get things done.

 

8. New email channel for the Infra team

The Infra team, known previously as Webmasters, can now be reached at infratructure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The preferred way of interacting with the EF IT team is through HelpDesk [5].

 

Many thanks for taking the time to read this communication. We understand that migrations and improvements can be disruptive, and we're sparing no effort towards minimizing the downsides and helping your projects be successful.

 

[0] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/187

[1] https://chat.eclipse.org/

[2] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Gerrit/Gerrit-and-Bugzilla-deprecation-and-migration-plan#oct-2024

[3] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5054

[4] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/infrazilla/-/issues/1730

[5] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/

[6] https://accounts.eclipse.org/mailing-list/cross-project-issues-dev

[7] https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/IT-Service-Level-Objectives

 

--

Denis Roy

Director, IT Services | Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse Foundation: The Community for Open Innovation and Collaboration

Attachment: OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature.asc

_______________________________________________
eclipse.org-committers mailing list
eclipse.org-committers@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/eclipse.org-committers