Why Migrate from Phabricator to Phorge

Updated 203 Days AgoPublic

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This is a list of reasons to migrate from Phabricator to Phorge, shared with you by the Phorge community that forked Phabricator.

To be honest, this just shows some core differences, then it's up to you to decide.

0. Unique Features of Phorge

Some big interesting stuff that it's more supported in Phorge:

• PHP 8.1 - while this is not officially supported... Phorge has great more support!
• plus, enjoy the Change Log of Phorge, full of unique features and fixes

1. Project Directions

In Phorge, Evan Priestley is still our spiritual beacon that illuminates our hearts but this person is not the Phorge project leader. So, in Phorge, directions are practically decided by your good proposals. So, you are practically welcome in joining the website of Phorge, ask questions, share ideas, propose patches (keeping backward compatibility, etc.) and probably they will be approved by somebody and included in Phorge! ✨

In Phabricator, Evan Priestley is the total leader maximum deciding directions. Note that this was probably the primary job of Evan, so we understand that Evan was not so happy to freely accept whatever community proposal, or invest time in onboarding new people in Phabricator.

2. Openness to Newcomers

In Phorge, anyone can:

• register in this website (click on the Login button above and register yourself)
• be able to ask Questions (in Ponder)
• then, if you are also marked as Trusted Contributors you can:
  • be able to create Tasks (in Maniphest) of from a Workboard like Phorge or Maniphest etc.
  • join the Chat
  • send Code Contributions (using Differentials, etc.)
  • do more awesome things

In Phorge, the openness on the above things can slightly change in the future just for anti-spam reasons, and not for political reasons. In Phorge, you will always be able to join Phorge if you are a human being and if you have not destructive/polemic goals. Registration either requires approval or is disabled for anti-spam reasons too. If your account requires approval, wait until an administrator approves your account. If registration is disabled, feel free to request permission in #phorge. It could take sereval hours to get a response as the IRC channel is not very active.

In Phabricator, it is no longer possible to join the official community forum to discuss changes, since it was switched off in 2021. Full stop. Also, you cannot register in secure.phabricator.com since Summer of 2017. So, for newcomers it is probably just no longer possible to contribute to Phabricator.

3. Openess to Contributions

In Phorge, it's much easier to propose a change than in Phabricator. Believe me or not, but a completely external newcomer in 2023 was able in 20 days to propose 15 patches and most of them were accepted in Phorge in few days. Also, as a proof of that, Phorge in April-May 2023 proactively imported changes from Wikimedia (that Wikimedia has not proposed in Phabricator - see T15081) and we reviewed many patches for PHP 8.1 from Wikimedia folks. So, if you would like to Contribute, can just explore the fantastic Phorge Contribution Guide. You can also explore how to do a Code Contribution in Phorge. In Phorge we have more than 10 Blessed Committers and they will probably go up, to review your code faster. Premising Phorge offers inferior code review because we (and everyone) is inferior to Evan (seriously, our code review is like "uhm .. what would Evan do ... ah!").

In Phabricator, your code contributions are no longer accepted. Full stop. But also historically, in Phabricator was honestly difficult to propose a patch since, again, that was the work of Evan, and Evan was strongly encouraging to hold your own fork, versus pushing upstream changes. Just as an example of it: this is why - years ago - Wikimedia hackers decided to just keep their local fork instead of proposing their patches to Phabricator. Note that Phabricator has only 3 Blessed Reviewers. Historically, really very high quality is required, with the normal effect that often many community things fall behind.

4. Future of the Platform

In Phorge, there is a nice General Vision to agree to have a stable and healthy future of the platform and the community. Feel free to read it and also Firm it if you agree:

• L1 Phorge Vision Statement

In Phabricator, if you are a customer of Phacility probably your future will continue to be stable and nice. If you are Evan, probably your future is also stable and nice. If you are an external community member, probably your future is just random and read-only.

What to do now?

Now you can upgrade your Phabricator→Phorge. Here our fantastic manual:

Update From Phabricator

This page is just a stub. Feel free to contribute ✨