2023-06-05 DevEx Meetup Notes

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Demos, Scheduled Topics

@Kyle McCormick : Repo checks

• Goal is to help developers and project leads/issue triagers

• We have ~200 repos with lots of little differences

• A repo check is something to ensure is true about a repository

• repo_checks command line tools lets you execute checks as dry runs or as active fixes

• Right now Axim runs it, but anyone can submit a PR and #ask-axim for review

• Recent check: Ensure Labels

  • labels are inconsistent between repositories (“bug ” vs “bug” vs “ bug”)

  • goals is to have a consistent set of labels/colors, loaded from a labels.yaml file in the repo-tools repo

• Q: How does this compare with Repo Health Checks (used by 2u)?

  • A: @Feanil Patel knows more. There is definitely more emphasis in repo_checks on fixing the inconsistencies rather than just reporting them. Repo health dashboard data is also currently not visible outside 2u. There’s also some crossover with backstage.

Cross Pollination

• Tools/features/opportunities

• Tips and tricks

• Roadmap news

@Jeremy Bowman (Deactivated)

• Development Environment Improvement Plans

  • Written up to summarize what’s still painful in devstack & Tutor and what’s being done about it

  • Incomplete, status updates on remaining blockers to using Tutor (and which blockers have been recently fixed) would be great

  • All: Check it out and see if anything is missing.

• We heard back from Orbstack in [Discovery] Docker Desktop alternatives · Issue #93 · edx/edx-arch-experiments

  • Generally good news in the short term

  • Although Orbstack doesn’t yet support Kubernetes; unclear if they’ll fix that by the time we get around to really wanting it in our local dev environments

• 2U is starting to look into Improve Dev Experience | Compass Internal Developer Platform

  • Atlassian’s version of Backstage + Okay (development metrics)

  • In free beta

  • Don’t have it turned on yet, so not a lot more to say beyond that it looks like it could solve some of 2U’s problems if it works as advertised

@Diana Huang

• Still nailing down issues with Apple Silicon and local development around MFEs.

• 2U is still focused on devstack work and fixes vs. Tutor.

@Kyle McCormick

• @Brian Smith is continuing to work on tutor-mfe support for running MFEs on the host (devstack style). Current challenge is around mismatched host names (localhost:xxxx vs apps.local.overhang.io:xxxx). He’s looking into a couple solutions/workarounds there.

• xmodule_assets removal is ongoing, @Andrey Cañon Jimenez is reviewing. Latest series of PRs will remove all Python processing from xmodule SCSS. Stop dynamically generating XModule SCSS · Issue #32292 · openedx/edx-platform

@Emad Ehsanrad (Do Not Use)

• feat: Add support for loading in-cluster config when running inside a pod by CodeWithEmad · Pull Request #844 · overhangio/tutor

• start working on my second issue on tutor.Gracefully handle bad plugins? · Issue #37 · openedx/wg-devops

Challenges

• Each challenge should have a follow up action.

• If you have an idea for follow up actions, add it.

• Or if you aren’t sure, leave it blank.

• We’ll discuss all actions either way.

• @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated) - devstack whackamole. Some issues are reproducible, some less so, some are only reproducible in certain contexts, and everyone seems to be using their own set of documentation

  • I am getting an M1 so hopefully that will help compare things between intel and silicon

  • much of it is edx-platform as much as devstack but it’s often hard to tell

• @Kyle McCormick Devstack dissuades removal of containers (dev.remove-containers, formerly dev.down) which is usually a performance win, but container removal is an important part of isolating issues and is still much better than a full destroy.

  • Possible documentation update: reminding people to remove-containers before destroying as a step in troubleshooting

Successes

• DevExp wins!

• @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated) We’ve found and documented workarounds for most of the issues encountered (Troubleshooting: Common Issues — Open edX Devstack Unversioned documentation )

Suggested Action Items

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Look at the board

The board: Developer Experience Working Group • openedx

Top-level initiatives: DevX: Top-Level Initiatives & Epics · Issue #1 · openedx-unsupported/wg-developer-experience