Homebrew-cask: Use discourse.brew.sh instead of the gitter.im chatroom

[commitay]

Personally I don't really like the public Gitter chatroom, it's hard to engage in or track long discussions as they aren't threaded.

https://discourse.brew.sh/ looks like it is a much nicer way of engaging with the community. It also already has a reasonable amount of cask related traffic even although we don't mention it in any of the cask repos.

I propose that we remove the Gitter chatroom in favour of the Brew discourse forum.

cc @Homebrew/cask @MikeMcQuaid

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Somewhat related, the #homebrew-cask IRC is mentioned in the readme and also has a repo integration, is it still in use or can it be removed?

[claui]

👍 for removing the Gitter chat in favor of discourse.brew.sh.

No strong opinion on #homebrew-cask but I’ve always appreciated that there is a registration-free way for any user to quickly reach maintainers in case of emergency, e. g. upstream malware or other security issues.

[commitay]

registration-free way for any user to quickly reach maintainers

Do any maintainers monitor #homebrew-cask?

[claui]

Do any maintainers monitor #homebrew-cask?

Good question. I tried to set up a bouncer (zrc IIRC) last year so I can monitor the channel but gave up half way.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I propose that we remove the Gitter chatroom in favour of the Brew discourse forum.

This seems sensible and reasonable to me 👍

Somewhat related, the #homebrew-cask IRC is mentioned in the readme and also has a repo integration, is it still in use or can it be removed?

If there's not some maintainers in most of the time I'd be 👍 to removing mentions of it.

[amyspark]

Good question. I tried to set up a bouncer (zrc IIRC) last year so I can monitor the channel but gave up half way.

You may find a Matrix account useful for this purpose. (I'm using it for my GSoC project with Blender, and it works well.)

I propose that we remove the Gitter chatroom in favour of the Brew discourse forum.
Somewhat related, the #homebrew-cask IRC is mentioned in the readme and also has a repo integration, is it still in use or can it be removed?

I agree with swapping Gitter for Discourse, but would it be possible to keep the IRC chatroom? I don't feel Discourse is appropriate for quick/emergency matters.

[commitay]

but would it be possible to keep the IRC chatroom? I don't feel Discourse is appropriate for quick/emergency matters.

I'd rather remove it unless we have several maintainers who can commit to monitoring it.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I'd rather remove it unless we have several maintainers who can commit to monitoring it.

Agreed. It's not about deleting the channel but having it mentioned as an official communication mechanism.

[CryoRenegade]

How about we make an official Discord server for Homebrew also? We can then sort out problems in channels like (#general) or (#core-bugs).

[vitorgalvao]

How about we make an official Discord server for Homebrew also?

I don’t think the solution is more chatrooms. From my experience with Gitter, chatrooms for open source seem like a bad idea. The same questions are asked over and over and conversations cannot be easily retrieved, leading to an endless cycle of repetition.

Chatrooms are a great idea for “hit and runners” that want to ask one question and leave, but frustrating for everyone else.

Dev-only chatrooms are another matter entirely. Those I think have value.

[CryoRenegade]

👍

[MikeMcQuaid]

I don’t think the solution is more chatrooms. From my experience with Gitter, chatrooms for open source seem like a bad idea. The same questions are asked over and over and conversations cannot be easily retrieved, leading to an endless cycle of repetition.

I agree. This is why I am not (personally) in chatrooms for end-users: I do not want to have a continuous, unstructured requests for support.

[commitay]

This was done in https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/49489

I'll wait a couple of days before deleting the gitter room so people active there have a chance to see the notice that it is being deleted.

[commitay]

Gitter room has been deleted.

[CryoRenegade]

RIP Gitter. Long live Discourse!