[OH-Dev] Moving bug scrapers out of the main code: thoughts?

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hey all,

Right now, we have some code in the main OpenHatch codebase that downloads 
bug data from remote bug trackers.

Will Kahn-Greene started working on a library to pull data out of 
Redmine-based bug trackers here: https://github.com/willkg/redminelib/ and 
it got me thinking.

Maybe the OpenHatch bug tracker download code should be factored out of 
the main website, and made available as a separate module for others to 
use. Here are some advantages:

* When (if) a bug arises in bug tracker import code, you don't have to set 
up the entire website to fix the bug. New contributors (and old ones) can 
just download that one module, run the test suite, discover it does not 
pass, fix the bug, and send a patch.

* By putting that code into a more clear place, it means it's easier to 
find that code *and* easier to find other code in the rest of the 
codebase, because you won't be distracted by bug tracker download code.

* When people want to write support for more bug trackers (like the 
discussions about adding Lighthouse and Github and Sourceforge as 
supported bug trackers), it will be easier to add them.

* Other people can use our bug tracker scraping code, which would increase 
the number of prospective contributors to it.

* Someone on this list (!) could step up as the bug tracker scraper 
maintainer, if he or she wants, and it would be easy to see where your 
responsibility starts and stops.

* When people make changes to the web app, we can skip running the bug 
tracker import tests.

I'd be curious to hear if people have any thoughts on this: worth the time 
to separate them out? Anyone want to be the maintainer of the bug tracker 
import code? (I would happily co-maintain with you, and make suggestions.) 
(-:

I especially am curious what people like Mark Cahill and Jessica Ledbetter 
think, as people who have been interested in adding support for more bug 
trackers.

-- Asheesh.

P.S. If we're interested in the idea, we can then argue about the details 
as to how we'll separate it out -- one bug tracker per Python package? Who 
knows.