Taking over Firebot

Community Ops
#1

As mentioned in the meeting, Firebot will no longer be maintained by Wolf and this seems like a good opportunity to move it to CIT.

In the blog post it mentions that the code hasn’t seen an update in a long time and it will be difficult to maintain.

Some things to discuss

  • Should we take this project at all?

  • Are there functions of firebot that have a better alternative already available? What features are used in the bot currently?

  • Do we still want to use mozbot at a base (instant no from @leo if we do)

  • What kind of resources do we need to maintain it?

#2

One question you missed that I think should be the first step: who is still using Firebot and what are they using it for? From there we can see what features are still needed with Firebot.

I know one feature Firebot used to be used for was storing info on who someone was and their contact details. We do this in Mozillians now.

The other feature I see used is the !seen command.

Oh and of course linking to bugs and giving their summary when a bug number is spoken…

I’d also ask - what was the original purpose of Mozbot? I know at one point there were things that were missing but there were no maintainers, or some sort of roadblock. Is there still a need for a "Moz"bot whether or not we use the current codebase?

#3

Firebot’s Primary use today is the bugbot stuff. Auto links to bugs and bug announcements. This feature is a very badly written bit of code.

There’s no doubt firebot is a cool guy who quite a few people would like to keep around.

Just, I’m not going to volunteer myself to try to install him :). We should maybe look at turning into a module of a newer IRC Bot

#4

Like Kensie said those are the main uses of Firebot really. One thing it also did was auto link crash ids for us when copy & pasted from about:crashes.

The seen command is a really good feature but I’m guessing any good bot should have that by default nowadays. And definitely the realtime bug announcements and autolinking them when mentioned in the channel.

It could also do AMO searches, that was nice. Ex. firebot: amo adblock plus

And of course, the use of the factoids you could teach it.

As far as who uses it? Everyone from the volunteers idling in #firefox to devs and triagers closely watching bug announcements in #firefox, #sumodev, #firebot and a number of other channels. Helps to dupe bugs really fast and catch bugzilla spammers.

[Also this is my 1st post on Discourse! so \o/ for me :stuck_out_tongue:]

#5

Apparently that already exists. There is bugbot in #bmo that does all of the bug stuff really well. It’s an instance of Supybot with a bugzilla plugin installed. Supybot is a modern python-based IRC bot with a nice plugin system. I don’t know who runs bugbot, but perhaps it could be used in the channels that needed firebot's bug features?

#6

Yeah,

Supybot has seemed like a good idea for some months now :smile:
We could potentially try to simulate firebot’s kind heart with supybot. It can’t be too hard (or can it?)

#7

The question still stands, is this something the community will want/need? If we seriously want to consider taking it on, the first step should (maybe?) be seeing if there’s actually interest.

#8

Sounds like something for a planet post/yammer to get the discussion going.

#9

So I think it’s safe to assume that there will be interest in having a single bot for these features (but we should double check anyway).

It seems like what we should be doing then is using Supybot, and most likely bugbot, as the base for the new Firebot. I think it would be nice to retain the name Firebot.

So I’d say first step would be to get the source for bugbot and find out if we can play with it. Whoever runs it right now would probably prefer a group like ours help maintain it if it’s going to be the one bot.

We could then see about merging in the remobot meeting functionality as well.

Using bugbot as a base would allow us to put something up right away without any hacking, then we could call for volunteers and add any missing functionality as we get interested contributors.

#10

I am interested in developing new bot.

Please, they list all the features that the new bot should start developing for me (if you allow too)

If volunteers show up to help me, I’d be very grateful :smiley: