Server Migration

Server Migration

Mixxx is currently in a bad situation because too much of it's critical infrastructure in relying on private servers and single individuals (i.e. a lot of important key infrastructure is maintained by few persons, which leads to a bad "bus factor").

Also, maintaing custom servers is time-intensive and boring. We need to make sure everything is updated regularily or risk being hacked.

Website

Currently built on Jenkins. If Jenkins goes down, RJ is the only one who can fix this. If we want to change the build process, we can't without RJ.

Also, we can only preview a single website PR via staging.mixxx.org (the most recently built one).

Proposal

We switch over build & deploy via Netlify. That way we don't need to take care of deployment and hosting ourselves. The build process can be edited via file in the website git repository.

We can preview multiple different PRs via the Netlify interface.

Preview: https://holzhaus-mixxx.netlify.app/

Migration

• Merge PR: https://github.com/mixxxdj/website/pull/98
• Enable Netlify for mixxxdj/website: https://mixxx-website.netlify.app/
• Migrate forum
• Migrate manual
• Switch mixxx.org domain over to Netlify
• Write Netlify redirects for old forum and manual links

Manual

Currently built on Jenkins. If Jenkins goes down, RJ is the only one who can fix this. If we want to change the build process, we can't without RJ.

Also, we can only preview a single manual PR via staging.mixxx.org (the most recently built one).

Currently, the manual is hosted in the /manual subdirectory.

Proposal

Building the manual in all versions and languages (including PDFs) takes too much time (Netlify only allows 15 minutes of build time). Instead, we can build on Travis CI and deploy to Netlify.

Since we can't deploy to a subdirectory, we need to create a new subdomain (e.g. docs.mixxx.org or manual.mixxx.org) and use that for the manual. Using Netlify's redirect system, we can catch all requests for /manual on the website an redirect them to the corresponding page on docs.mixxx.org.

Preview: https://holzhaus-mixxx-manual.netlify.app/

Migration

• Merge PR: https://github.com/mixxxdj/manual/pull/113
• Enable Travis CI for mixxxdj/manual repository
• Enable Netlify for mixxxdj/manual repository
• Add custom domain for the manual
• Write Netlify redirect for old mixxx.org/manual URLs

Forum

The forum is currently a self-hosted phpBB3 instance at /forums and has the charm of the early 2000s. Again, only RJ is able to fix if issues arise. There are problems with E-Mails not being sent.

Proposal

We can switch to a hosted Discourse instance and host it at forums.mixxx.org.

Migration

• Apply for a hosted Discourse forum: https://mixxx.discourse.group/
• Get SQL dump of phpBB data and import into Discourse locally
• Upload Discourse backup to https://mixxx.discourse.group/
• Write Netlify redirect from https://mixxx.org/forums to https://mixxx.discourse.group/

Wiki

The Wiki is currently hosted on our own Server. Again, issues can only be fixed by RJ. We have long-standing issues with activation emails not being sent, which has blocked some controller PRs for half a year already.

Also, the DocuWiki syntax is cumbersome and not as straightforward as markdown.

Proposal

Move to GitHub Wiki. Then it's closer to the source code and people will be more likely to take a look at that. If you already have a GitHub account, no additional account is needed. We don't have to worry about activation emails anymore.

This will move the Wiki from mixxx.org/wiki to https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki. We can add a HTTP redirect.

Migration

• Enable GitHub Wiki on mixxxdj/mixxx repository
• Migrate existing content from DocuWiki to GH Wiki (https://github.com/hoxu/dokuwiki2git)
• Add Apache redirect from /wiki https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki.
• Add Netlify redirect

Build Server

Right now Mixxx is built on Jenkins and on Travis CI/Appveyor. The Jenkins build server can only be modified by RJ, and if he doesn't have time to fix issues this will delay releases (as we're already seeing this with the 2.2.4 release).

Also, Jenkins and Travis/Appveyor might diverge, so that CI builds pass but Jenkins does not.

Proposal

Building Mixxx already works on Travis/Appveyor. Instead of using Jenkins for the release build, we should use these CI builds for releases, too. The only thing missing is deploying build artifacts to our download server.

Compiling the build environment could be done locally or stay on Jenkins.

Migration

• Get SSH access to the download server
• Modify Travis CI config to deploy build artifacts

Download Server

Currently hosted by Garth, can stay as-is but we needs credentials to deploy files from CI.

URL: https://downloads.mixxx.org