Move Off Trac

The goal of this page is to cover the phases of a project aiming at moving some critical features from Trac to an other solution (or combination of).

More information about the start of this project can be found in ticket #4095.

Discussions also happened in Nuts&Bolts meetings: see from WeeklyMeeting#April22024.

Scope

Goals and Requirements

1. MUST replace Trac as currently used for Ticket and Wiki by some alternative(s):
   • MUST look better: current UI looks old which makes the Tahoe-LAFS project looking dead
   • MUST be better maintained: Trac is dying? max 2 contributors per month - ​https://openhub.net/p/trac
   • MUST be easier to maintain: Trac is difficult to update (current = v1.0.13/2016-09-11, latest = v1.6.0/2023-09-23)?
   • MUST allow Self-Registration (Trac requires manual registration via email)
   • COULD support OAuth2 with Github?
   • MUST be (F)OSS
   • MUST be self-hostable
     • note "able": MUST be a story for getting to a self-hosted instance if we want
     • ..but doesn't have to be self-hosted right away
2. MUST replace the current landing page (start/home page from the Trac/Wiki?):
   • preferably with a static blog/page generator updated from a Git repo (e.g.: (Go)Jekyll, Hugo)
   • possibly with a LAMP stack as discussed: ​https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/3892
3. MUST replace the current binary repository for Tahoe-LAFS releases (​https://tahoe-lafs.org/downloads)
   • by providing at least a similar way to transfer files via ssh
4. COULD be used to replace:
   • Github code hosting and review (pull request), keeping only a mirrored clone
   • Github Actions (to avoid leaving secrets in environment variables)
   • Circle CI (to avoid giving them too many permissions)

Inclusions

• Trac users of the Tahoe-LAFS project
• Trac issues of the Tahoe-LAFS project
• Trac wiki pages of the Tahoe-LAFS project
• Trac HTML home page of the Tahoe-LAFS project
• Hall of Fame HTML page of the Tahoe-LAFS project
• The related DNS records (mostly: tahoe-lafs.org)

Exclusions

• Other Trac projects (see DevInfra)
• Buildbot master instances for some other Trac projects
• DARCS SCM for some of the other Trac projects
• Any other services provided by the current server and not yet documented in DevInfra

Deliverables

1. A VPS (hosted by Hetzner) providing the following features powered by NixOS and Gitea:
   • a tracking system provisioned with the issues migrated from Trac (same numbers)
   • a Wiki system provisioned with the relevant pages migrated from Trac (same names)
   • a static website replacing the landing page from Trac with the code required for CI and CD
   • a blog post for the Hall of Fame page (if sensible - fallback = static page)
   • a (Git) repository defining the VPS it-self and its configuration as code (including the secrets using sops)
   • optionally including the terraform code allowing to manage the related DNS records (if Gandi supports it)
2. A detailed migration plan to handle the transition (DNS changes and/or redirections)
   • documented in a this wiki page
   • covering the possible manual steps related to DNS records, HTTP redirections or URL rewriting
   • with a (Git) repository including/referring to the tools used to actually migrate
3. An high-level migration plan for the features hosted on the VPS described to be later hosted on Codeberg SaaS (assuming it is possible)
   • documented in this wiki page too

Deliverable 1 - self-hosted Gitea/Forgejo? on NixOS

1. Testing
   • Issues and Wiki can be provided by Gitea/Forgejo?:
     • ​https://code.lafs.eval.latfa.net/tahoe-lafs/trac-2024-05-23: 1st migration with many issues
     • ​https://forge.lafs.eval.latfa.net/tahoe-lafs/trac-2024-07-25: 2nd second migration with a few issues left
     • Known issues (#1170 is a good example):
       • tables are not correctly converted to MD
       • authors need to be created as user before the migration to link contributions to their profile
       • some original links are still not converted and points to tahoe-lafs.org (e.g.: ​http://!?)
       • more?
   • Website can be provided by Nginx and build from a Git repo hosted by Gitea:
     • ​https://www.lafs.eval.latfa.net/
     • The mock is more minimalistic and the PoC site have to be rewored this way
2. Production
   • TBD

Deliverable 2 - migration plan from Trac to self-hosted Gitea (or Forgejo)

1. Testing
   • ​https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/MoveOffTrac
   • Where to document the steps (now in org-mode)
2. Production
   1. new alias legacy.tahoe-lafs.org hostname + cert renew? req:
      • root access > meejah OK
      • DNS zone access > brian + meejah OK (gandi.net)
   2. migrate from Trac to new VPS
   3. tahoe-lafs.org to new VPS + redirect/proxy to legacy

Deliverable 3 - high-level migration plan from self-hosted to SaaS - Codeberg

1. Testing
   • Issues and Wiki page have been migrated from Forgejo to Codeberg:
     • ​https://codeberg.org/Tahoe-LAFS/trac-2024-07-25
   • Known issues:
     • all links to contributors are broken (likely because Codeberg does not allow this? maybe the user needs to be local and in the org first?! )
     • all links to comments are broken (likely because they use the ID from the source!)
     • all the link to attachment are broken
2. Production
   • TBD

Pros and Cons of self-hosted vs SaaS

Gitea on self-hosted NixOS

Pros:

• Links to issues and wiki pages should work (WiP)
• Attachments are migrated and available
• Links to comments and attachments work
• Links to old and authors work (if pre-provisioned)
• Nearly ready to MoveOffTrac (within one month)
• Many options to fix content later (e.g.: full access to DB)
• Website already works with CI/CD
• CI/CD works like Github and CAN cover all platform

Cons:

• VPS required (8$/m)
• Decent baby-sitting required: updates, monitoring and backup/restore (how many h/m?)
• Poorly scalable, but could perform better than SaaS (DoS protection?)
• Registration (spam) still need babysitting, but less than for Trac (semi automatic)

Questions or remarks:

• Maybe LA could manage the self-hosted instance for a short term (e.g.: 1 year)?

Forgejo on SaaS - Codeberg

Pros:

• Smaller VPS (5$/m), but still required for redirection (stateless, maybe possible w/o?)
• Minimal babysitting: updates and monitoring (how many h/m?)
• Free of extra charge on Codeberg (20$/user/m on Gitea!)
• Should be scalable, but performance could be a problem (at least on Codeberg!)
• Registration (spam) is handled by Codeberg

Cons:

• Links to authors are broken (likely on purpose - to be verified with Codeberg)
• Delays MoveOffTrac (unless we agree on 2 steps)
• Reduced options to fix the content later (e.g.: no access to the DB)
• Jekyll website needs to be adapted to work on Codeberg (pages)
• CI/CD works differently from Github/Gitea? (but possible)

Questions or remarks:

• Links to comments are broken: likely a bug, but on which side?
• Links to attachments are broken but is there any attachment at all?
• Should we test a free plan on Gitea.com (with CI/CD)?
• What cost CI/CD on Codeberg vs Gitea.com? (for Win and Mac?)