Information about community-maintained fork

[btamayo]

Just the link: https://github.com/bats-core/bats-core/

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READ THIS FIRST:

This thread was borne (heh) from this comment, please read that one first, then come back here!

Please know that this effort was started only yesterday (Sept 19, 2017), so it's still NOT DONE and IN FLUX, but I still wanted to create a discussion for it so that I can 1) move faster 2) get help and feedback and 3) let people be aware of this effort

What's done and what's happening today/soon:

You can view the entire plan happenings here: https://github.com/bats-core/bats-core/projects/2

• repo name has been changed from "bats" to "bats-core" for UI/UX purposes. It would be cumbersome to examine an entire URL to see if you're referring to the correct repository.

If you have an existing PR

Please repoint them to bats-core/bats-core. I'll add instructions on this soon if needed.

New Issues and PRs and Wiki

New issues: please open new issues here

Processes

Do we really need this?

Again, refer to: #150 (comment). The lack of write-access and feedback severely impacts the request to reach 1.0. Bats has not been in active development for three years and as many people and even orgs rely on this tool, it's important to keep it maintained.

Licensing

Bats is, and will continue to be licensed under MIT, under which this migration is permitted

How can I help?

Express interest in this thread that you'd like to help move things to the new repo. Things like: moving issues, repointing PRs, merging PRs, creating a git process, improving docs, etc. As of this writing, I'm currently taking the outline that @ztombol created and moving them to here as issues (e.g. #1), and have provided a template here:

So a few of high-level ways:

1. Direct people to the new repo
2. Help create and track issues and PRs
3. Docs, wiki, etc.
4. Other misc ways (this is what the thread is for!)

Possible problems in the future:

I'm aware of issues such as re-merging, packaging, distributing, etc. As a project, this aims to respect the original author while enabling work and maintenance. @sstephenson has been invited to the bats-core org and can choose to accept the invite.

Who are you and why are you doing this:

Although I haven't contributed to bats personally, I'm thankful that it exists and use it heavily in sideprojects that are in bash. It would be a pity to see it fade. While there's been volunteers, issues, PRs, these efforts have been stalled severely without a platform to enable people to develop. If or when this repo is active again, it can optionally be integrated through git.

[dimo414]

Thanks for doing this!

[nwinkler]

@btamayo Just a minor suggestion/question - why is the new org named "bats-core"? Wouldn't it have been better to call it just "bats" or something like that? I'm asking since there are additional libraries like https://github.com/ztombol/bats-assert that might be a good fit to be included in the same org (need to work with the owners/maintainers, of course), and a name like "bats-core" seems to be very much focused on just the core module...

[edouard-lopez]

@nwinkler
Bats organization already exists but is unrelated.

[Nowaker]

Great job guys!

[mislav]

I've renamed this issue to not read like an official announcement anymore.

This is open source. You're welcome to fork any project and continue maintaining it. You're welcome to let the community members know of that (in a non-invasive way). You're not welcome to come into a project's issue tracker and post an official-sounding "announcement" that instructs people to not use this project anymore nor this project's issue tracker— even if you believe that the original project is not maintained.

[Nowaker]

even if you believe that the original project is not maintained

Is it?

@mislav Rather than making it more difficult for others to find this fork, how about letting these folks in and let them run the original project? Because it is NOT maintained. And all original Bats users lose here.

[mislav]

Rather than making it more difficult for others to find this fork, how about letting these folks in and let them run the original project?

1. I didn't make it more difficult; I just made it sound less official (and less upper-case).
2. It's not my call to make to promote new maintainers.

[Nowaker]

Upper-case thingy is exactly how I found that ticket. Because it stood out. So yeah... You made it more difficult. Nothing in that ticket sounded like an official announcement, by the way. It was 100% clear it was a community-maintained fork. It's so bad the only ticket that drew attention (in a negative sense) of project collaborators is the only productive ticket in that repo...

[Potherca]

@mislav Sorry, but your argumentation (and title change) kinda suck. If you have the power to edit issues, how about merging the MR that clearly states that this project is no longer actively maintained and save developers who are new to BASH tests (and/or BATS) a lot of time.

Seriously dude, I didn't find this specific issue until 30 minutes after discovering this repo!

[juanibiapina]

I would do this differently (after checking that the license allows it).

I would keep the new repo attached to this one (as a fork on github), to make it clearer it's a fork and just to let things work in a more standard way.

After that I would rename the forked project and add a note indicating that most of the work is taken from bats. A community based project has a tendency to grow too much, and regardless of the developments that happen on the fork, some people might still want to fall back to good old simple bats. This would also help when finding a cool organization name. And I definitely wouldn't touch the bats brew installer.

The new project already has enough visibility to grow on its own, so any new issues can just organically move there. I would then focus on different ways the new project can be marketed that doesn't involve hijacking this repo (which I understand is how @mislav might have felt).

[mislav]

Nothing in that ticket sounded like an official announcement, by the way.

Except for this part: “⚠️ [ANNOUNCEMENT] REPO MOVE!”

If you have the power to edit issues, how about merging the MR that clearly states that this project is no longer actively maintained

I don't want to assume that, just because @sstephenson granted me maintainer status on this repo, it gives me the license to declare his own projects as no longer actively maintained.

The new project already has enough visibility to grow on its own, so any new issues can just organically move there. I would then focus on different ways the new project can be marketed that doesn't involve hijacking this repo

@juanibiapina 👍