Shutting down qa.guix?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> skribis:

> I am still planning to shutdown data.qa.guix.gnu.org and
> QA which depends on it within the next couple of weeks. I do hope it can
> return some point though, and hopefully sooner rather than later.
>
> On this like most decisions I'm indecisive, I could try and keep the
> current server going, but it's not the most cost effective setup and
> it's very low on disk space. I could replace the server with some
> slightly better setup, but this would still mean I'm managing a key part
> of the infrastructure, which is something I'm trying to move away
> from. There was some discussion of the project taking over the hosting,
> and maybe that will happen at some point, but it hasn't happened yet. So
> while not having qa.guix.gnu.org for a time isn't ideal, I'm still going
> with this approach.

I think this underlines a collective failure to get our act together.

I believe there’s consensus that qa.guix is useful and has been a boost
for reviewers and contributors; we’d probably all want it to provide
quicker feedback, which is a sign of success: we’ve come to rely on it.

I know this has been discussed several times and it remains unclear to
me why as a project we never managed to move forward—maybe the comfort
of the status quo?


Anyway, would it be possible for you to transfer billing of the hardware
(Hetzner?) to Guix Foundation?  Does Guix Foundation know what it would
cost them?

The “spending committee” (Tobias, Ricardo, and myself), which oversees
expenditure from the funds held at the FSF, can also be in the loop to
provide additional financial support.

As for system administration, is there documentation that people willing
to help could look at?  Very concrete things like: what services are
running on which machines, what do I do if one of them is stuck or if I
get this error message, etc.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

PS: You’ve done amazing work over the years.  As a contributor, I find
    it super reassuring to know that you’re always available and
    focused, committed to improving patch workflows for many years.
    It’s been a long road already and I admire this level of commitment
    and hard work.