Gitter feature parity overview issue

Question

Gitter feature parity overview issue

MadLittleMods opened this issue 4 years ago · 64 comments

Answer 1 · 2021-09-09T11:56:14.000Z

I think it's a bit misleading to mark the Maths feature as done. For web it works, but I need help finishing element-hq/element-android#2133, and as far as I'm aware nobody has started implementing it on iOS. My PR has stalled for over a year now, and I'm quite sure that it doesn't need much developer time to merge.

Answer 2 · 2023-01-18T02:27:53.000Z

It's happening!

"So, after over 2 years, we’re pressing the button at last: we’re migrating all the existing content in the original centralised Gitter platform over into Gitter’s Matrix server, and we’re planning to replace the old Gitter app with a Gitter-customised version of Element during the week of Feb. 6th 2023."

https://blog.gitter.im/2023/01/16/gitter-is-going-fully-native-matrix-in-feb-2023/

Answer 3 · 2023-01-19T10:13:15.000Z

Setup redirects to rewrite the old Gitter URL to Matrix room alias, https://github.com/vector-im/sre-internal/issues/1755

That URL is 404 for the public or at least I'm not authorized to read. Can the comment be updated to refer to the issue/PR addressing redirect or some information about its status?

Answer 4 · 2023-01-19T16:49:46.000Z

@csarven The links are up-to-date but those are internal repositories that you won't have access to.

Answer 5 · 2023-01-20T15:17:04.000Z

The sunset period is FAR too short. Please consider extending it.

Answer 6 · 2023-02-05T18:39:51.000Z

So now I have the Element app on Mac, ... I see one room is in bridged from Gitter, but I don't see any other Gitter rooms. How to I open an arbitrary Gitter room in Element? How from Element can I see what Gitter rooms exist?

Answer 7 · 2023-02-05T18:41:16.000Z

Any recommendations for (command line) matrix api help?

Answer 8 · 2023-02-05T18:44:50.000Z

@timbl You need to search the public room directory and select gitter.im as the target for the search.

Answer 9 · 2023-02-05T18:50:35.000Z

BTW, all public rooms are bridged.

Answer 10 · 2023-02-05T18:55:08.000Z

Searching Public Rooms for 'gitter' does not seem to give me gitter rooms .. and searching for "solidos" doesn't give me our solidos room

Answer 11 · 2023-02-05T18:58:35.000Z

sorry that was 'gitter' not 'gitter.im'

Answer 12 · 2023-02-05T19:05:50.000Z

You need to select "gitter.im" from the drop-down below the search box. In your screenshot it says "Matrix rooms (matrix.org)" in mine the drop down is opened.

Answer 13 · 2023-02-05T19:08:20.000Z

@leonardehrenfried thanks for the info. Trying this. It just says "joining". Is it too early?

Answer 14 · 2023-02-05T19:10:54.000Z

Don't really know. I was able to join the room with my matrix user successful. Maybe retry?

Answer 15 · 2023-02-05T19:11:28.000Z

Retrying worked, thank you!

Answer 16 · 2023-02-05T19:11:44.000Z

@leonardehrenfried It looks as though the gitter rooms like solid/solidos may all have been bridged to things like https://matrix.to/#/#solid_solidos:gitter.im -- is that right?

Answer 17 · 2023-02-05T19:19:34.000Z

Yes that's to be expected. Seems that room addresses can't contain slashes.

Answer 18 · 2023-02-05T19:20:58.000Z

The room address is #solid_solidos:gitter.im.

Are you aware that starting tomorrow the gitter backend will be converted to use the matrix protocol only?

Answer 19 · 2023-02-06T16:56:42.000Z

Are you aware that starting tomorrow the gitter backend will be converted to use the matrix protocol only?

The migration date has moved to 2023-02-13 (next Monday). On this day, you will get access to sign-in to the gitter.im homeserver and will have access to the public and private rooms that you were previously using on Gitter directly (membership and admin permissions).

Public rooms are already available to join if that's all you need (this has been a thing for a couple years now)

Answer 20 · 2023-02-06T19:35:34.000Z

First want to say thank you for all the hard work you are doing! Am really looking forward to using Matrix more generally (especially for things that are only available through Gitter atm like private rooms) 😄

The migration date has moved to 2023-02-13 (next Monday).

IIRC this was originally going to happen today. Curious why this was moved back a week (if you are able to share). Recognize people working on this are likely very busy. So don't want to distract. Just having a little more context would be helpful (maybe one sentence would be sufficient). Sorry again for the intrusion.

Answer 21 · 2023-02-06T19:38:59.000Z

IIRC this was originally going to happen today. Curious why this was moved back a week (if you are able to share). Recognize people working on this are likely very busy. So don't want to distract. Just having a little more context would be helpful (maybe one sentence would be sufficient). Sorry again for the intrusion.

@jakirkham Mostly just prep work that collided with FOSDEM which happened this past weekend.

Answer 22 · 2023-02-07T14:37:51.000Z

Just to let you know (I reckon what I'm seeing is related to this issue here): I take it you're just running https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/issues/2857 ? This doesn't seem to scale all that well - I have a room with over 9000 gitter users (https://gitter.im/ethereum/solidity) that's now been unusable for over an hour due to the matrix side apparently not being able to handle the amount of users being joined to the room at once all that well (If I read the notification element gives me correctly, after an hour it has synced only half of the users). Not sure if me viewing the room via federation makes this worse and whether this will settle eventually - if it keeps taking several hours to properly open the room from now on, that'd be a problem :-).

Answer 23 · 2023-02-07T15:12:37.000Z

@ekpyron You're probably running into element-hq/element-meta#1339. Please give that some 👍 reaction love

Although it's possible you're talking about a different performance problem while all of those members were joining the room.

Answer 24 · 2023-02-13T20:58:55.000Z

Congratulations on the merge! 🥳

Had a question about one aspect. AIUI there will still be two identities: one on Matrix and one on Gitter for each user (at least until PR matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#2787 is complete). Is that right or am I misunderstanding something?

Answer 25 · 2023-02-13T21:03:28.000Z

Had a question about one aspect. AIUI there will still be two identities: one on Matrix and one on Gitter for each user (at least until PR matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#2787 is complete). Is that right or am I misunderstanding something?

@jakirkham Your understanding seems in the realm of correct (don't want to assume too much though).

@jakirkham-560313510fc9f982beb1a331:gitter.im exists on Matrix on the gitter.im homeserver. That will exist forever.

Currently, it's not possible to rename or merge that account with your other Matrix account (I assume you have some other Matrix account on matrix.org).

matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#2787 is one possibility that could help this scenario though 👍

Answer 26 · 2023-02-13T21:08:57.000Z

Thanks Eric! 🙏

Yeah that's right. Have @jakirkham-560313510fc9f982beb1a331:gitter.im and @jakirkham:matrix.org as well

Gotcha ok. Are there other proposals to be aware of as well?

Answer 27 · 2023-02-13T21:51:18.000Z

Are there other proposals to be aware of as well?

@jakirkham I think that will hold the most references (anything linked from that).

A half-measure for example could be to mark an account as tombstoned in favor of another account. This way when someone tries to DM or mention you, their client would instead point them to them to the account you prefer. I am not aware of a MSC for this (feel free to create one)

Answer 28 · 2023-02-13T22:10:41.000Z

Thanks for the pointers, Eric! 🙏

Another question: Am noticing that some Gitter DM's keep the history when ported over to Matrix and others don't (starting new blank DM's). Is there something I need to do on my end to make sure the history is pulled over from Gitter into the new Matrix DM's?

Answer 29 · 2023-02-13T22:21:24.000Z

This section in the blog post might get you up to speed, https://blog.gitter.im/2023/02/13/gitter-has-fully-migrated-to-matrix/#where-is-my-message-history

If that doesn't answer it, come chat on https://matrix.to/#/#gitter_gitter:gitter.im. This issue isn't meant for ongoing support.

Answer 30 · 2023-02-13T22:26:03.000Z

Ah sorry will do to that. Thanks for your help! 🙏

Answer 31 · 2023-02-13T23:17:52.000Z

List element-hq/element-web#437 please. Existing clients are retarded enough as they are, but not supporting such simple feature is just unacceptable for modern software.

Answer 32 · 2023-02-16T12:13:43.000Z

Shutdown the IRC bridge, https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/gitter-infrastructure/-/issues/262

This appears to be a dead link.

That said, what is the status of accessing Gitter from IRC now? No longer possible? Are we all going to have to have yet another stand-alone IM app/Web-chat page open now, on top of the forty-eleven that we already have?

This is a huge step backward if so.

Answer 33 · 2023-02-16T12:49:23.000Z

Excuse my ignorance as well please, but why is the request to implement one of the most convenient features of Gitter - ability to embed illustrations into text via ![alt-text](image-url) markdown code - not supported in any matrix client - is marked off-topic in a page titled "Gitter feature parity"?

Answer 34 · 2023-02-16T12:52:07.000Z

Shutdown the IRC bridge, https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/gitter-infrastructure/-/issues/262

This appears to be a dead link.

That said, what is the status of accessing Gitter from IRC now? No longer possible? Are we all going to have to have yet another stand-alone IM app/Web-chat page open now, on top of the forty-eleven that we already have?

This is a huge step backward if so.

I'm not sure if there is public instance running at the moment, but at least you can run your own matrix <-> irc bridge: https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc

Answer 35 · 2023-02-16T12:59:37.000Z

I'm not sure if there is public instance running at the moment, but at least you can run your own matrix <-> irc bridge: https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc

That doesn't seem very scalable. Everyone wanting to use the IRC bridge that used to exist before this migration really should not have to stand up their own bridge.

Why was this feature simply forgotten about or ignored, particularly when it is straightforward enough to stand up a bridge?

Answer 36 · 2023-02-16T13:01:47.000Z

I'm in no way involved but I guess the reason is lack of resources. As a free service Gitter/Matrix have to prioritize some features over others.

Matrix is very, very bridgeable and perhaps someone already runs one.

Answer 37 · 2023-02-16T15:46:49.000Z

@brianjmurrell Most of these are links to internal issues that you won't be able to see.

The IRC bridge was essentially a consumer of the Gitter API which as the past couple blog posts explain are no longer accessible.

There won't be a built-in alternative but there are a few IRC bridges you could run, https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc. matrix-ircd is similar to irc.gitter.im but it's pretty alpha, sadly.

If you want your Gitter room bridged to IRC, then there is a IRC bridge integration built-in but that has to be setup per-room by the room admins.

Answer 38 · 2023-02-16T15:53:04.000Z

@hiiamboris I think you want to track element-hq/element-web#437 and element-hq/element-web#4044 which looks like you might have already found.

Answer 39 · 2023-02-16T15:56:53.000Z

@MadLittleMods yeah found those. But they're 6-8 years old (obviously neglected :), so it's unlikely they'll get attention without being listed above :/

Answer 40 · 2023-02-16T15:58:37.000Z

@hiiamboris element-hq/element-web#4044 looks reasonable enough to me that I think someone could move it forward.

Come chat in https://matrix.to/#/#gitter_gitter:gitter.im if you have further questions

Answer 41 · 2023-02-16T16:00:59.000Z

The IRC bridge was essentially a consumer of the Gitter API which as the past couple blog posts explain are no longer accessible.

Yes, that is understood. What I am saying is that part of the migration to Matrix should have included rather than simply disregarded IRC bridge users. There are bridges available. I would submit that the migration should have included standing up a (single, central, public) bridge for all existing bridge users to migrate to.

Answer 42 · 2023-02-16T16:06:34.000Z

@brianjmurrell While I agree that the Gitter IRC bridge was great and convenient, it's not core to Gitter (it's core to you). Bridging and interacting from IRC is still possible but you will have to take up the mantle.

Answer 43 · 2023-02-18T21:49:51.000Z

I see that

~~GitLab/GitHub based permissions for a room~~

is striked out. I'm seeing runtime issues from the migration, where the account is unable to create or join certain rooms, which belong to GitHub organisations from it. Is there a feedback issue, some Gitter community (Discourse) or a personal channel where this could be discussed?

Answer 44 · 2023-02-20T09:59:31.000Z

There are a lot of project histories stored in via bookmarked messages with the ?at query string.

Could they somehow be stored on gitter so that in future they can be easily spidered, and reused by automated agents? This has allowed things to get spidered, searchable, bookmarkable. Right now they seem broken links.

It important because for many projects this can act as a knowledge base, act as an automated FAQ, record contributes etc.

Perhaps gitter could make the history as it was before, but read only. With new messages going to matrix?

Answer 45 · 2023-02-20T16:35:09.000Z

I'm seeing runtime issues from the migration, where the account is unable to create or join certain rooms, which belong to GitHub organisations from it. Is there a feedback issue, some Gitter community (Discourse) or a personal channel where this could be discussed?

@almereyda See the "What's changing?" section of the blog post. Best to discuss in https://matrix.to/#/#gitter_gitter:gitter.im

Answer 46 · 2023-02-20T16:40:21.000Z

Could they somehow be stored on gitter so that in future they can be easily spidered, and reused by automated agents? This has allowed things to get spidered, searchable, bookmarkable. Right now they seem broken links.

@melvincarvalho There won't be redirects from the old Gitter chat message ID to the new Matrix event ID. But you can have the same setup as before by linking to a specific message (Share -> Copy the matrix.to link). This experience will also be better when the Matrix Public Archive comes to fruition:

[...] “Public static archive (indexed by search engines)” solution. We’re addressing this with the Matrix Public Archive but it isn’t quite ready yet to have a canonical instance for everyone to use yet. This piece will be an eager follow-up to today’s migration though.

-- https://blog.gitter.im/2023/02/13/gitter-has-fully-migrated-to-matrix/

Answer 47 · 2023-03-10T16:58:12.000Z

There won't be redirects from the old Gitter chat message ID to the new Matrix event ID.

If I understand correctly, does it means that all old Gitter message links such as https://gitter.im/$namespace/$room?at=$message_id are now dead links and inaccessible forever?

Answer 48 · 2023-03-13T21:03:43.000Z

If I understand correctly, does it means that all old Gitter message links such as https://gitter.im/$namespace/$room?at=$message_id are now dead links and inaccessible forever?

Initially while responding, I thought this was the case since doing it strictly would require a database and lookup service available forever which isn't ideal. But thinking more what's possible, I think we could extract the timestamp from the Gitter message ID and use jump to date in Element to get you to the right place.

This is now tracked by https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/gitter.im/-/issues/9

Answer 49 · 2023-03-14T08:40:28.000Z

That's great to hear :) and perhaps veering a bit off topic, the fact that this is now possible sounds like a great point in favor of transparent identifiers (for rooms, people, etc.) rather than —or in addition to— hash-like IDs.

Answer 50 · 2023-03-14T15:05:51.000Z

GitLab/GitHub activity as a first-class citizen in a room’s side-panel

Any update on this? That should be the absolute top priority feature to restore, since it was the main distinguishing reason to use Gitter in the first place. I'm surprised there seems to be no motion at all there.

Answer 51 · 2023-03-14T18:16:21.000Z

@calculuschild The quantity of work for such a migration is huge. What we need are more contributors. Can you help?

Answer 52 · 2023-03-18T12:28:39.000Z

all old Gitter message links such as https://gitter.im/$namespace/$room?at=$message_id are now dead links and inaccessible forever?

ability to embed illustrations into text via ![alt-text](image-url) markdown code - not supported in any matrix client

These two are closely related as well. People have collections of chat bookmarks, which are now all dead (temporarily). But once they start working, people will find out that all embedded illustrations are invisible now (since none of the clients shows them) making a lot of bookmarks useless. Gitter simply mirrored all images to its own server to avoid revealing IPs, so each message has both original and gitter-based link. But as far as I can tell during all the years of Matrix development no one even designed how this feature will work in it. And apparently your management saw it as a bright idea to shut down working infrastructure first and then spend a few more years to figure out how to put kludges into Matrix to make it work again. My applause.

Answer 53 · 2023-03-18T15:27:49.000Z

I think you're overestimating the number of managers that work at Matrix.

Have you considered that what is a very important feature to you might not quite be quite so important for others?

Gitter have prioritised moving over to Matrix over porting every feature that it once had. I personally feel that that was the right way forward considering the (presumably) limited resources.

Answer 54 · 2023-03-18T15:34:17.000Z

@hiiamboris The quantity of work for such a migration is huge. What we need are more contributors. Can you help?

Answer 55 · 2023-03-18T16:07:09.000Z

@marclaporte Sorry :) I'm not a web dev, and I consider the whole web stack a stroke of madness.

Anyway I in general appreciate the work you're doing, truly, but I also find the whole Gitter migration a ridiculous mess, and I haven't seen a single Gitter user who didn't curse it. It's easy to talk about "quantity of work for such a migration", but how many people were using Gitter? Hundreds of thousands? Can you possibly imagine the total amount of work disruption this migration has caused to them? It's a few orders of magnitude more than it would require to avoid it. And what about social aspect of it? Do you want Matrix to be universally seen as the ultimate evil where nothing ever works? Because that's how all the pissed off people are now seeing it.

Answer 56 · 2023-03-18T20:05:22.000Z

@hiiamboris

It's easy to talk about "quantity of work...

It's also easy to complain.

I'm not a web dev

There are many ways to help, even without coding. You just need to decide to be part of the solution and act.

I am not a Gitter dev. I am not affiliated with Matrix. I just use Gitter for some communities and the transition went very well:

I have lots of experience in this field. I have been managing Open Source projets for over 2 decades, and I am the founder of https://wikisuite.org/

I have experience in system migrations, and I know how tricky these can be. It is my professional opinion that the migration was very well handled all things considered. It would have been a waste of ressources to continue to maintain two systems. At a certain point, you need to make the move.

Now, to you and the others that have concerns: I urge you to transform that energy into positive action to make things better.

Answer 57 · 2023-03-18T20:23:10.000Z

There are many ways to help, even without coding. You just need to decide to be part of the solution and act.

How do you envision this @marclaporte ?

Answer 58 · 2023-03-18T20:41:08.000Z

https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/

Answer 59 · 2023-03-18T21:17:01.000Z

@marclaporte Well, in that wider sense I'm contributing right now by trying to bring developers attention to the critical problems. Because if problems are not even noticed, they have no chance of being solved, and worse yet, they are going to be repeated. And look how that went? It's not even on the roadmap, and the only active person is not affiliated with Matrix and just tries to tell me that what most people consider "unacceptable" is in his professional opinion called "well handled" :)

Answer 60 · 2023-03-19T08:30:30.000Z

GitLab/GitHub activity as a first-class citizen in a room’s side-panel

Any update on this? That should be the absolute top priority feature to restore, since it was the main distinguishing reason to use Gitter in the first place. I'm surprised there seems to be no motion at all there.

Hey there, there is motion on this front. We're thinking about how best to integrate with Hookshot, our GitHub/GitLab (and others) integration. matrix-org/matrix-hookshot#631 I'll try to give a status update on this in the coming weeks, but we have given this some thought.

Answer 61 · 2023-04-13T07:28:18.000Z

Hi! I very much miss a link to GitHub in each user's profile. It was great for discovering great projects/repos from room co-members, and some background on everyone. A nice collaboration feature if you ask me :-)

Answer 62 · 2023-04-17T20:36:03.000Z

@loziniak You would probably be interested in tracking MSC1769: Extensible profiles as rooms

Answer 63 · 2023-05-10T00:52:14.000Z

If you want your Gitter room bridged to IRC, then there is a IRC bridge integration built-in but that has to be setup per-room by the room admins.

@MadLittleMods Thanks for the information. I can't find the IRC bridge integration, though. I just created a test room through the app.gitter.im web UI, and I seem to have the "Admin" role, but I can't find anything about setting up an IRC bridge in the room options. Is it documented somewhere?

Answer 64 · 2023-05-10T05:44:16.000Z

@falsifian If you're using app.gitter.im (or any other Element Web/Desktop instance) and want to try the built-in integration, open the Room info panel by clicking the ℹ️ icon in the top-right of the chat header -> Add widgets, bridges & bots -> IRC Bridge (your favorite IRC network) -> Add -> then run through the process to Link a new channel

If you're looking to setup your own bridge, best to look and ask in the specific IRC bridge channels:

Project: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc
- Docs: https://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-appservice-irc/latest/index.html
- Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#irc:matrix.org
Project: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ircd (deprecated)
- Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#matrix-ircd:matrix.org
Other projects: https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc

Gitter feature parity overview issue

Gitter features needed in Element

Extras

Sunset

Master migration rollout plan