[pcre-dev] PCRE infrastructure is moving

For many years my former employer, the University of Cambridge, has hosted
the infrastructure (source repository, Bugzilla, release distribution site,
mailing list) for PCRE, for which support I am very grateful. Bugzilla and
the mailing list have shared support with Exim. However, all good things
must come to an end, and the time has come to move PCRE to somewhere else.
I intend to start this process in the next day or two. A summary and the
details follow - if anyone has any comments, please post them or send
directly to me as soon as possible. Thanks.

SUMMARY

* PCRE1 is at end-of-life and there are plenty of copies of the tarball
around. I plan to work only with PCRE2.

* The source code repository will move to GitHub. There is support for
access to GitHub from SVN clients.

* The GitHub issues facility will replace Bugzilla. Outstanding issues in
Bugzilla will be re-created by hand (luckily there are not very many).

* PCRE2 releases are built by running "make distcheck", which does a lot
more than just copying all the repository files into a tarball (in fact,
not all are copied). The resulting tarballs (.gz, .bz2, .zip) and then
signed by me. There does not seem to be any way of uploading externally
produced releases and signatures to GitHub. Therefore:

* Release tarballs and their signatures will be uploaded to a SourceForge
project.

* Conveniently, SourceForge supports mailing lists, so a new mailing list
will be created at SourceForge. I'm afraid you will all have to
re-subscribe.

DETAILED PLAN

1. Create a new repo on GitHub.

2. Populate the new repo by importing from vcs.exim.org/pcre2/code/trunk.
Check for any configuration that might need changing, both for the repo and
for issues support.

3. Clone the new repo onto my local workstation. Sort out .gitignore and my
private files (test configs etc.) and do a test build.

4. Test the ability to do an svn client checkout from the GitHub repo so
that it can be documented (I do not intend to use this facility myself).

5. Update some files and push to the repo to test that it's all working and
that I have sussed out what to do with git. Several documentation files
mention exim.org so will need to be updated. Also README.

6. Post to pcre-dev that the change has started, the repo has moved, and
Bugzilla should no longer be used, being replaced by GitHub issues. I think
there is a button on Bugzilla to disallow the creation of new issues -
don't know if I have permission to do that, though.

7. Tell those auto-testers that I know about that the repo has moved (
opencsw.org, oss-fuzz, coverity).

8. Create a pcre2 project on SourceForge.

9. Populate the SF project with the current 10.37 release tarballs. See if
there's a good place in the GitHub repo to add a pointer or link to this
site.

10. Set up an SF mailing list. Call it pcre2-dev to emphasise that it's for
PCRE2.

11. Post to the old pcre-dev about the new list and ask people to subscribe
to it. Note that the old pcre-svn list will be abandoned - I think the
notification features of GitHub can take over that job (tell me if I'm
wrong).

12. Ask postmaster@??? to forward mail to pcre-dev@??? to the new
list. This means leaving the new list open to non-subscribers for a while,
unless there is a way to detect and accept such messages with a closed list.

13. Go through the list of outstanding Bugzilla issues and create GitHub
issues for those that are still relevant. I have downloaded a list of my
issues, but there may still be some JIT ones in addition which I hope
Zoltán will help with.

14. Ask webmaster@??? to update references to the releases, repo,
Bugzilla, and the mailing list, and to perhaps add a note to the SF pcre
project, pointing to the new pcre2 project. What happens to other mail @
pcre.org? Could pcre2-dev@??? redirect to
pcre2-dev@???, or would that be too much traffic?

15. Edit the pcre page on Wikipedia to update the references and links. See
if it's possible to set up a pcre2 page that is a synonym.

16. Post to the old pcre-dev list to say that it's all happened, and
publish the new URLs for everything.

17. Tell exim-maintainers and the manager of the old infrastructure that
PCRE has now moved and is independent of Exim.

18. Consider whether to create a GitHub Pages site - and see if anything
needs editing on my existing personal site at quercite.dx.am.

19. Resume life...

Regards,
Philip