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.
- We will continue to use Bugzilla, moz-phab, Phabricator, and Lando
- 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
- We’re still working through the planning stages, but we’re expecting at least six months before the migration begins
APPROACH
In order to deliver gains into the hands of our engineers as early as possible, the work will be split into two components: developer-facing first, followed by piecemeal migration of backend infrastructure.
Phase One - Developer Facing
We’ll switch the primary repository from Mercurial to Git, at the same time removing support for Mercurial on developers’ workstations. At this point you’ll need to use Git locally, and will continue to use moz-phab to submit patches for review.
All changes will land on the Git repository, which will be unidirectionally synchronised into our existing Mercurial infrastructure.
Phase Two - Infrastructure
Respective teams will work on migrating infrastructure that sits atop Mercurial to Git. This will happen in an incremental manner rather than all at once.
By the end of this phase we will have completely removed support of Mercurial from our infrastructure.
GitHub is Trash
TLDW : GitHub PR’s are atrocious, it’s good for hosting code, but using it for large collaborative projects is a no go. - Linus Torvalds (creator of git)Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
… which is part of why they aren’t using GitHubs pull request feature to land changes?
“at this time”
Meaning they’re planning/considering to in the future.
And I’m sure you’ve got a long history of submitting patches to Firefox given your strong opinions on the process Mozilla uses to manage this?
Nobody here needs “a long history of submitting patches to Firefox” to have an opinion on the tools used to manage the project. I assume that most here sharing their opinion don’t and yet you need not scroll far. You merely need some knowledge and experience with the tools, be it in personal, corporate, FOSS, etc. projects. Besides I don’t spend my free time helping FOSS projects just to use it to be like “my opinion better” that’s literally just the “appeal to authority fallacy”. But if you must know, I have helped here and there throughout the years under various different aliases/accounts. (Why “various aliases”? because I enjoy helping not some meaningless credit, it’s just how I am.)
So what you are saying is that as someone who has never worked on the Firefox codebase, you still somehow know more about managing contributions to one of the largest FOSS projects in the world that has been running pretty successfully for the last 25 years?
Idk, maybe try a bit of humility - like if it looks like they are making a weird decision, maybe it’s not because they are dumb and you are very smart, maybe it’s because they know stuff that you don’t?
First off, not what I said.
Second off, I never called them dumb. I actually happen to have a good relationship with them, so I take offense to what you’re implying. I mearly stated that I don’t like GitHub and gave some legitimate reasons. Which btw :
Maybe the one who should learn humility is you.
That is not what that means
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I’m only a native English speaker, so guess I could be interpreting it wrong.
You should try being a native English reader.
What it means is “they will not be accepting pull requests at this time.” Whether or not they are open to changing this in the future is not specified. They have not specifically stated that this is off the table, nor have they stated this is their intent.
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No. They’re just not publicly saying it’s off the table. Whether they’re entertaining it internally is a totally different question.
I’m amazed people are still using Mercurial. I worked on a few hg projects about a decade ago and it wasn’t a very good experience. It was easy for people who used subversion, but if you were even halfway familiar with git you just missed a lot of functionality.
Dang, I was really hoping that they would stop using bugzilla and switch to something like GitHub/GitLab/Gitea issues instead. Perhaps also put things like feature requests there as well and have one place to contribute to Firefox
Would have been amazing if they federated with Forgejo and supported federated git like they’re doing with mastodon.
Mozilla being Mozilla, I’d guess. They should have gone sel-hosted with sourcehut, or at least gitlab. Or if not self-hosted, the choice should have been at the least gitlab or better, given it allows to chose DCO over CLA. But perhaps not everyone cares… I remember when gitlab introduced DCO, and how that helped debian and gnome to migrate to gitlab. After allowing DCO, other projects migrated as well.
I’m not that fan of gitlab, and I’d prefer sourcehut for open source projects, but if wanting something closer to github, then gitlab might be the answer. But Mozilla is a corp, maybe they don’t care much about these things, and as a corp, perhaps they were looking for CLA sort of contribution any ways…
I also think gitlab hosted by Mozilla Foundation would have been a better solution than github.
Mozilla Corporation is owned by the Mozilla Foundation, so their incentives aren’t that of a corporation but a non-profit.
I would love to see the Mozzilla foundation double down on ActivityPub and host a Forgejo instance or work with Codeberg for hosting.
I wonder how much Github being the primary place for FOSS source code limits people around the world from joining the movement.
I wonder if the same is going to be true of Thunderbird. Thunderbird actually requires you use Mercurial to contribute at all, rather than managing both git and Mercurial.
That being said…it’s kind of odd to me how swiftly Mozilla of all companies/orgs is to embrace a code forge hosted by Microsoft for their main software. Surreal, even.
Wtf is wrong with gitlab…
Nothing, it works fine.
Then why didn’t Firefox use their power to support a git that’s not owned by Microsoft?
I don’t know. Because they are not angry with Microsoft anymore and github better fits their workflow?
- 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
Whyyyyy? Why github?
Reviewing PRs costs money/time
Edit: added “Why github?”
Fair point. I would say on a personal level that GitHub actions is quite nice to use, especially with the marketplace. But I’d be surprised if switching version controls also entailed a CI/CD change for Mozilla, so I can’t think of a good reason.
Although we’ll be hosting the repository on GitHub
Why aren’t they using a self-hosted instance of Gitea? This makes no sense move to Github of all places.
Could be familiarity? I saw an article go by recently about how projects that aren’t on GitHub suffer from lack of contributions. Although that matters more for smaller projects, Mozilla is a beast and could probably pull people off GitHub if it wanted to.
Also if anyone should be trying to build up an alternative to GitHub, it should be Mozilla
If you are at a skill level, where you can meaningfully contribute to a project like this, registering for an alternative git provider should not be an obstacle
Obstacle? No. Annoyance? Yes.
