libera.chat irc move and opportunity to consolidate channels

[ssbarnea]

As entire Ansible community is very close to switch from freenode to https://libera.chat, I think we can use this as an opportunity to combine #ansible-lint and #ansible-molecule into a single channel.

Basically I know at least 4 different projects that can be described as development and quality assurance tools that are likely to be better under a single channel instead of separated ones as they have lots of dependencies and common goals.

• #ansible-lint (10-20 users)
• #ansible-molecule (60-70 users)
• https://github.com/ansible-community/toolset/ - pre-built container with ansible, molecule and ansible-lint
• https://github.com/ansible-community/vscode-ansible
• https://github.com/ansible-community/schemas - ansible JSON validation schemas, primary used by vscode-ansible
• several other small utility projects

I am thinking that maybe something like below may prove more effective and future proof, as the list of tools may change but their overall purpose not really.

• #ansible-qa
• #ansible-toolset
• #ansible-devtools
• #ansible-tooling

What do you think? If you have a preference for a particular proposal remember to upvote the answer. If you have a new one add a new answer but never include more than one option on a single answer.

[ssbarnea]

#ansible-qa

[ssbarnea]

#ansible-tooling

[ssbarnea]

#ansible-devtools

[ssbarnea]

#ansible-toolset

[dmsimard]

Keeping things as is, separated channels.

Other than that, I wonder about the (implied or actual) scope of the channels based on the suggested names. For example, I could see ara or ansible-test being "on-topic" in one or more channels.

I understand the opportunity but for the sake of discussion, are there problems with the current lint and molecule channels ?

[ssbarnea]

I will consider your answer as a proposal to not combine the two channels. To answer your other questions, yes I do often see discussions being made in other channel than the ideal one and that makes harder to reach those involved. I do think that some level of grouping is needed as we cannot really have one channel per repository.

Still if a great majority considers that both channels should be mentioned as is, I will keep them.

[rgarrigue]

One "tooling" channel to unite them all, could include users of AWX too for example. But without the bot notifying about PRs & so on

[ssbarnea]

AWX is not a development tool. I would keep any ansible products out of the group as they are bigger and have permanent staff hired to work on them.

[abhchand]

Thanks for raising this discussion! Changing platforms is always a good opportunity to re-evaluate.

However, is there a good reason to re-organize other than this being a good opportunity?

Having a channel blindly named after the project itself (e.g. #ansible-molecule) seems logical to me.

Some downsides of purpose-based channels.

• The purpose of the channel is immediately clear and unambiguous. It's only about one thing (that tool)
• Future-proofing is almost impossible. Trying to optimize ahead of time how people will use something is rarely ever accurate
• There's not a huge cost of adding or removing channels. If the tools are renamed or removed, channels can update accordingly.
• Naming is hard! For newcomers it's not immediately obvious what separates -toolset from -tooling. This distinction may be even harder for non-english speakers.