[isabelle-dev] AFP hosting

[Klein, Gerwin (Data61, Kensington NSW)]

Let me try to restart the bitbucket/hg discussion more specifically for the AFP.

The main reason we are looking for a hosted service for the AFP is user and account managements. We don’t want to process password resets, account queries etc for hundreds of authors, and we would like to be able to implement a basic permission scheme (admin/push/read-only).

Isabelle itself does not have this problem and can get away with self-hosting quite nicely. I don’t think there is any need for immediate action.

For the AFP, the list of mercurial hosting services is not that great. Bitbucket was pretty much the only provider that did everything we wanted with a reasonably good interface.

From the options discussed so far:
 - versionshelf: looks nice, but we’d have to pay $95/month to keep AFP author access (>45 accounts)

 - sourcehut: looks good, but is alpha and a bit too early for the AFP.
              Could be an option if it goes out of alpha before Feb 2020. We should keep an eye on it.

 - phabricator hosted: cost is per user, too much for the AFP

 - phabricator self-hosted: would be free, but someone would need to donate the time to run it reliably.
   We’ve been hosting github and bitbucket instances internally, and that does seem to be quite a bit of work.
   It’s unclear to me if there is any manual effort involved in user management. 
 
From the other paid options on the list:
 - codebase [https://www.codebasehq.com]: 19 GBP/month would be sufficient for the AFP.
   Offers many features we don’t need, but so do the others. Interface looks viable.

 - xp-dev.com & sourcerepo: can’t see much of the interface from their websites,
   and what I can see does not look that intuitive. Happy to be convinced otherwise
   if someone want to try them out.


Free options from the list don’t compare to what we’ve had so far:
  - Mozdev/TuxFamily.org: does not apply
  - Puszcza, Savannah: interface insufficient for our needs
  - OSDN: unpleasantly reminiscent of SourceForge, has advertising
  - SourceForge: been there, don’t want to go back


So, in total, two of the paid options might be viable ($95/month and 19GBP/month), potentially a third if sourcehut becomes stable early enough.

There is another option for the AFP: we could host on github and use the mercurial git plugin [https://hg-git.github.io] to work with it as if it was a mercurial repo. I don’t have much experience with how stable that option is, but it would be free and it would be easy on account management.

If it works reliably, people can also choose freely what client they want to use (hg or git). We’d stay on monotonic pushes as policy, so no change to current practice, only different background storage.

Cheers,
Gerwin