DEPR Meeting Notes (2021)

Owned by Nimisha Asthagiri (Deactivated)
Last updated: Dec 07, 2021 by Diana Huang
11 min read

Action Items

Agenda Backlog

  • More documentation around deprecation

  • How do we create a DEPR pipeline?

    • Review the Toggle Removal report

      • toggles are a good first step

      • anything we should add to the report that we’re not capturing today?

    • How do we engage other squads to help out?

    • How do we make it visible to squads what their DEPR status?

    • What are the organization code smells that might indicate DEPR needs?

    • How do we prioritize what to work on?

    • Metrics for analyzing the impact of DEPR work

Agenda

Past Agenda

Agenda (1/5/21)

  • Update / Review DRAFT - Koa Platform Release Notes

    • @Diana Huang to add DEPR tickets to the notes - can review with group next meeting

  • Site Configuration & White Label

    • update: it seems like the Open edX community isn’t interested in supporting this functionality

    • Can we talk to enterprise about removing these with assistance from DEPR?

    • We have code, templates, and data that all should be removed, but can be removed separately

    • talk to the service owners about removing site-specific code as well. does it make sense to deprecate this directly?

    • exclude: theming for now

  • Check in with Revenue team about https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-90

  • 2021 Goals

    • White Label and Site Configuration code

      • Action Item: write a DEPR ticket to gauge community reactions to the deprecation, offer up eduNext model as an alternative - @Nimisha Asthagiri (Deactivated)

      • Action Item: communicate with enterprise team about future plans to deprecate white label and get buy in and support - @Diana Huang

    • Microfrontend/Frontend code

      • Koa has rudimentary support for MFEs

      • Lilac has plans to streamline MFE

      • How do we want to handle this removal of code?

        • ID verification might be a good place to start?

          • has a DEPR ticket

        • Learner profiles

        • start anything currently ‘Accepted’

      • Old Mongo

        • blocked by old mongo courses on edge

          • waiting for product to assess the state of edge

        • should be able to move forward in it

    • Phase out configuration?

      • could be a big project goal

      • looking into replacements

      • write up a project plan on this once we get further on it

    • XServer

      • In progress

    • EdxRestApiClient

      • review the list of services

      • focus on edx-platform, credentials, discovery - others are in the process of being deprecated, potentially

    • XModule → XBlock

    • DEPR pipeline

      • Can we provide a query or something to the eng directors regarding the engineering ops review?

      • Focus on it next quarter?

@Nimisha Asthagiri (Deactivated) write a DEPR ticket to gauge community reactions to the deprecation, offer up eduNext model as an alternative
@Diana Huang communicate with enterprise team about future plans to deprecate white label and get buy in and support

Agenda (1/19/21) -

  • XServer

    • This just needs a little bit of verification left

    • Just want to make sure we’re not breaking any courses unintentionally

  • import shims

    • reviewing the last few PR that are importing the wrong way

    • going to be put into #slash-n-burn channel for group to review

    • woohoo!

  • updates

  • white label + site configuration

    • still need to talk to enterprise about the future of this work

    • still used in other repos to split by sites

    • can we make a separate process for external deprecations? - where external teams are responsible for doing the deprecation work

  • configuration repo

    • dependent on getting devstack and other docker containers off of being reliant on this

    • Open edX looking for alternatives right not

    • BTR - hoping Lilac will be the last Open edX release to use configuration

    • Open edX is only half of the solution - internal edX usages like sandboxes will also have to move off of it

Agenda (2/2/21)

Agenda (2/16/21)

  • Hackathon readout

    • need to refactor the configuration and usage of edx-enterprise’s api client to use the single edx-enterprise user

    • need a review for course-discovery’s refactoring

  • Check in on existing streams

    • some things moved into accepted

  • pycontracts DEPR ticket to be written - @Diana Huang

  • Hack(?)

Agenda (3/2/21)

Agenda (3/16/21)

  • Last XModule removed from edx-platform!

    • Set up pinata celebration?

    • “One idea: When we retired Vertica recently, we each wrote Vertica tributes that were poems/odes/prose/limericks - and bbeggs read them all. That could be expanded to add PPT/Sheets presentations? And maybe fanfiction? Songs?” - Data Engineering

    • Round robin reading of odes

    • Mail everyone in the company one (1) piece of candy

    • Origami pinatas that people can make it at home

    • Ask Usman to stream himself destroying a pinata

      • Send him a jacket at least!

    • Send something out digitally for people to do themselves

    • @Sarina Canelake (Do Not Use) (Deactivated) to organize this.

  • Removal dates for DEPR tickets: can we just say this is the acceptance date?

    • Yup, we can do this

    • @Diana Huang to make these changes to the OEP

  • https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-108

    • In progress, getting close

  • https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-123

    • Community is not comfortable with replacing front ends with MFEs

    • No Tutor plugins or single-install support yet

    • Planning for Lilac to ship with a few MFEs as a sort of test case

  • Can we measure the metric of DEPR work?

    • Community contributions - @Sarina Canelake (Do Not Use) (Deactivated)

      • Contributions to front end code from anyone

    • Recouped cost of upgrade - @Jeremy Bowman (Deactivated) @Feanil Patel (Deactivated)

      • Lines of code(?)

      • Repos(?)

      • Dependencies

      • Rough estimate of this work

    • Coverage metrics

    • Code complexity - @Dave Ormsbee (Deactivated)

      • Run automated tools before and after

      • Measure happiness with code before and after

        • Could use 2 question survey to see how people

      • Flavor complexity

    • Developer effectiveness

      • Multiple implementations is confusing

    • Import tree size of edx-platform @Michael Terry (Deactivated)

      • Automated tools for this

      • proxy for code comprehensibility

        • How many other things do you need to understand to understand this file

    • Lines of code @Diana Huang

      • Talk to Ned about this - instrumented for OSPR

  • Meta discussion

    • How do we track non-DEPR work for the group?

      • Use wiki with checkboxes for now

    • Should we make another project?

    • Github projects

@Diana Huang update OEP for removal dates, add communication field to link to Discourse discussion
@Sarina Canelake (Do Not Use) (Deactivated) organize XModule pinata celebratin
@Sarina Canelake (Do Not Use) (Deactivated) Discovery: Community contributions metrics
@Jeremy Bowman (Deactivated)@Feanil Patel (Deactivated) Re-couped cost of upgrade metrics
@Dave Ormsbee (Deactivated) Discovery: code complexity metrics
@Diana Huang Discovery: lines of code metrics
@Michael Terry (Deactivated) Discovery: size of import tree metrics

Agenda (3/30/21) -

Understand the need for XQueue Watcher and its future
@Diana Huang to respond to just mention the general guidelines.

  • Community involvement - core committer commitment/participation

    • FYI - had a meeting with how we can invite core committers to what are currently internal-only meetings

    • DEPR working group is a good possible venue for inviting them

    • need to make sure that we have appropriate understanding about what’s internal and what’s not

    • maybe one meeting a month will be open to the community

Agenda (5/14/21) -

  • Shoppingcart removal

    • Final removal of shoppingcart djangoapp

  • DEPR metrics

    • what about the intangible effects of deprecation work and tech debt?

      • developer effectiveness

      • reliance on institutional memory

      • developer sanity/retention

  • AJ's question about DEPR project access

    • Look at Jira permissions on the DEPR project and verify they work correctly

    • New Jira vs. Old Jira confusion

    • Now we know where the permissions tab is

Agenda (6/8/21) -

Agenda (6/22/21) -

Agenda (7/6/21) -

@Diana Huang - create DEPR tickets for Devstack deprecations

Agenda (7/20/3221) -

Agenda (8/3/21) -

  • DEPR Blended

    • @Diana Huang still needs to write a brief

      • Will collab with @Sarina Canelake (Do Not Use) (Deactivated) on this brief

    • Possibility of pitching different briefs to different providers

    • Give a ranking to the providers of projects

      • Within EdxRestApiClient project, we could just use contagion as a ranking criteria

      • What do we want to get rid of before the next Open edX release?

    • other candidate possibilities:

  • Taking advantage of the updates to engineering pathways

Agenda (8/17/21)

  • Blended Brief(s)

    • separate ones for site configuration + general bucket of DEPR work

      • briefs in progress, getting close to being in shape to be submitted

  • Engineering All-Hands

    • have some time to ask for recruits

    • how should we sell it?

      • learn about unfamiliar parts of the codebase

      • delete things so you never have to work on them

      • get to meet/work people in other parts of the organization, including more senior folks

Agenda (8/31/21)

  • Welcome to the new folks!

  • Blended project updates

    • site configuration

    • general DEPR work

      • Can use the Paragon Blended Brief as an example

  • https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-163

    • Help define how the community can continue to use entrance exams while removing it from edx-platform

      • Next Steps

        • Reach out to Ken/TNL first, to make sure we extend the Acceptance Date @Diana Huang

          • Find out what other blockers exist for Learning MFE

            • proctoring?

            • If there are others, we can delay until they are dealt with

        • Reach out to Appsembler to see if they can extract this from edx-platform @Nimisha Asthagiri (Deactivated)

          • Reach out to other preferred providers in #core-committers @Nimisha Asthagiri (Deactivated)

  • Elasticsearch vs OpenSearch @Diana Huang

    • propose OpenSearch as a replacement for Elasticsearch

    • would like to write a DEPR ticket to get input from community early

  • Interests and Contributions of New Members

Agenda (9/28/21) -

https://openedx.slack.com/archives/C023AGJJWLV/p1630005387002200

  •  

    •  

    • Need to announce in Slack/on Discuss, etc for further feedback

  • Remove Jenkins jobs

    • We are moving things to Github actions

    • Can’t use the Github-hosted runners, need to spin up self-hosted runners with SRE support

  • RequireJS

    • When can we move us off of Require to Webpack

    • May need to be a FEDx-led project to help fill in expertise gaps

    • Can we make this a Blended dev project?

    • @Diana Huang reach out to the FEDx group about next steps

  • Hacking time

 

Agenda (10/26/21) -

Agenda (11/9/21) -

  • Discovery around removing ES from our services

  • Ecommerce update, maybe?

  • DEPR in the time of non-profits

    • Making DEPR meetings public

      • Learning how to be public first vs. private first is going to be different

    • We (2U) probably won’t own this in the future, but would still have to be driven by the folks as part of this working group and at 2U.

    • Would like to see more involvement from the community in DEPR process, proposing, etc.

    • Hopes and dreams: Can we get more visibility into DEPR and attention from the internal folks? Should we communicate these internally as well as externally?

Agenda (11/23/21) -

  • https://github.com/jazkarta/edx-jsme - Nobody really maintains this anymore and we’d like to deprecate it, Peter Pinch has offered to help

    • Can talk to MIT when we open this up more directly

    • edx-zoom also being deprecated, can we bundle the work of deprecating them together?

    • This might be more tricky due to the JS inserted into every capa problem.

  • lms/djangoapps/dashboard has only contained 2 ADRs for about a year after its removal, can those be removed now?

    • Answer seems like ‘yes’ - @Michael Terry (Deactivated) to open PR

  • Blended Projects

    • ‘Bucket’ project needs to find contact to move onto the next step

      • Talk to Marco about this

    • ‘Site Configuration’ project was owned by Sarina, who moved over to TCRIL

      • Would need to find out from her what the status of this is.

  • Steps to open this up to the community

    • Discourse thread

    • Posts in Open edX Slack

    • Move meeting to Zoom

    • Create a new calendar for DEPR and can send invite to the calendar

    • Ensure wiki page is visible to community

    • Mention in the contributors meeting (happens every two weeks)

 

Agenda (12/7/21) -

  • First public meeting!

  • What can we work on next?

    • Review DEPR board

      • Make sure https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/~151054611/pages/2442395936 gets moved to a public space so community can access it and add to https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-108

      • Talk with FedX folks/djoy about timeline around non-MFE frontends

      • https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-163 - can we investigate how other Open Source projects handle this use case (i.e. large site/maintainers don’t use it anymore but others do)?

  • https://github.com/jazkarta/edx-jsme - What support can we provide to get this removed?

    • only used by one edX course

    • need to write up a DEPR ticket and announce it - @Peter Pinch