= 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 ==

== Deliverable 2 - migration plan from Trac to Gitea ==

== Deliverable 3 - high-level migration plan for the features ==

== Pros and Cons of self-hosted vs SaaS ==

=== self-hosted ===

Pros:
* Links to issues and wiki pages should work (WiP)
* Links to comments work
* Links to attachments work
* Links to authors work (if pre-provisioned)
* Nearly ready to MoveOffTrac
* 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?)

=== SaaS ===

Pros:
* Smaller VPS (5$/m), but still required for redirection (statless, maybe possible w/o?)
* Minimal baby-sitting: updates and monitoring (how many h/m?)
* Free of extra charge on Codeberg (20$/user/m on Gitea!)
* Should be scalable, but performance could be a problem (at least on Codeberg!)

Cons:
* Links to comments are broken
* Links to attachments are broken (or no attachement at all?)
* Links to authors are broken (likely on purpose)
* Delays MoveOffTrac (unless we agree on 2 steps)
* Reduced options to fix the content later (e.g.: no access to the DB)
* website needs to be adapted to work on Codeberg
* CI/CD works differently from Github/Gitea (but possible)

Remarks:
* 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?)