Gforge decommission


Why ?

Gforge was first installed at OW2 during 2008. It currently runs under PHP and postgreSQL.

About the term forge here what's stated by Wikipedia:

The term forge refers to a common prefix or suffix adopted by various platforms created after the example of SourceForge (such as GForge and FusionForge).

What will happen ?

We will shutdown the server that hosts forge.ow2.org and all the related services : Subversion, CVS, Trackers, File Release System, etc.

Along with the data migration process that is currently running on per-project basis (see "migration" below) A SQL database dump will be achieved before the shutdown.

When ?

We expect to free up the server by the end of Jun, 2018.

migration : What should I do ?

We might have already got in touch with you or performed standalone migration steps if your Gforge project meets the following criterias:

  • some SVN commit(s) were registered since Jan 2017
  • the also project exists in JIRA

However if you think your project should be explicitly moved over the news tools, or have any concern, please open a request to our servicedesk

If nothing has been done about migrating your project from Gforge to the new tools, be informed that (fortunately) all projects source code and binaries will be kept as online archives.

Below is a list of selected tools replacements as per the technical choices that were made and implemented over the past two years. When applicable, it includes guidelines to migrate the data either on your own or with our assistance.

Remember : once the server will be offline, there is no coming back to Gforge. Refer to the sections below to see how the data will be relocated or archived.

Subversion repositories

SVN repos will be archived at http://svnlegacy.ow2.org/ as read-only.

Websites

The files for websites (usually <project>.ow2.org) which sits at /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/<project>/htdocs on Gforge's server are in sync with another (public) web server. Those websites won't go offline - however, you'll loose direct access (SFTP/SSH) to the files. This is a good opportunity to move your content to Gitlab Pages.

Some projects already moved to it, see those examples :

http://asm.ow2.io/ <> https://gitlab.ow2.org/asm/asm.ow2.io
http://fractal.ow2.io/ <> https://gitlab.ow2.org/fractal/fractal.ow2.io (as you see they "just" copied their html content over the git repo)
http://joram.ow2.io/ <> https://gitlab.ow2.org/joram/joram.ow2.io

When a website on ow2.io domain is ready, please ask us to add a redirection from the ow2.org equivalent.

As a general guidline, please see GitLab Pages documentation

Releases distribution (FRS)

Releases distribution will be handled by the new system : see Uploading-Releases for instructions.

The older Gforge "Files" page (example: https://forge.ow2.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=23) with links to packages, release notes and related will go offline. Fortunately, binary files will be kept as online archive at the same location : http://download.forge.ow2.org/. If an equivalent "download page" is needed for your project it will have to be implemented as a web page along the project website : see Websites section above.

Remember : without any further action by the deadline, Gforge's packages, release notes and releases related data will be archived from Gforge's database as a SQL dump for the posterity.

Trackers

GitLab issue tracker will be used.
Most of the active projects with existing issues (example: https://forge.ow2.org/tracker/?atid=100049&group_id=49&func=browse) were already migrated to GitLab. Still, if you really need to migrate your issues to GitLab we have tools to make this step a bit less painful.

Remember : Without any further action from projects, trackers will be backed up from Gforge's database as a SQL dump for the posterity.

News

Projects News will be managed on the Project marketplace : See how to provide or update news for your project.

mailing lists aren't in the scope of GForge decommission. No change on that part.