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 server

1. Testing (PoC + migration step)
   • VPS provided by Hetzner, mostly defined using Terraform code and deployed by pull request
   • OS based on NixOS, defined using Nix code and deployed by pull request
   • Redirections from legacy to new URLs: provided by Nginx, defined using Nix code and deployed by pull request
   • Issues tracking and Wiki pages: provided by Gitea or Forgejo:
     • ​https://code.lafs.eval.latfa.net/tahoe-lafs/trac-2024-07-25
     • ​https://forge.lafs.eval.latfa.net/tahoe-lafs/trac
     • Todos and known issues (#1170 is a good example):
       • tables are not correctly converted to MD
       • some original links are still not converted and points to tahoe-lafs.org (e.g.: ​http://!?)
       • authors need to be created as user before the migration to link contributions to their profile
       • spam mitigation measure required for self-registration (e.g.: OAuth with GitHub/GitLab?)
   • Static website: provided by Nginx, build from Jekyll code and deployed by pull request
     • source: ​https://code.lafs.eval.latfa.net/tahoe-lafs/web-landing-page
     • preview: ​https://www.lafs.eval.latfa.net/
     • live: ​https://www.lafs.eval.latfa.net/
     • Todos and known issues:
       • the mock is more minimalist and the PoC site have to be reworked this way
       • the Hall of Fame pages till needs to be "migrated"
2. Production: a) basic only: VPS + OS + NGinx to redirect legacy URLs to services hosted elsewhere b) complete: all features from the PoC above

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

• Detailed documentation in ​https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/MoveOffTrac/tree/main/docs (WiP)

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

1. Testing (PoC)
   • Issues and Wiki page have been migrated from Forgejo to Codeberg:
     • ​https://codeberg.org/Tahoe-LAFS/trac-2024-07-25
   • Todos and 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