2023-07-17 DevEx Meetup Notes

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Cross Pollination

• Tools/features/opportunities

• Tips and tricks

• Roadmap news

@Rebecca Graber (2U ArchBOM)

• Devstack bug fixes

• Figuring out if we can reasonably measure how long it takes someone to onboard

  • this includes communications latency

  • results vary wildly (1 day to 20 days)

  • This includes non-technical onboarding issues like paperwork and getting permissions

• Question: @Mahan Abbuspour

  • using tutor from the start for eduSpirit

  • why does 2u use devstack? what are the advantages?

    • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XAipznjIcTaE2H454M74No2Ro_9VftbolfV4YVv-B9I/edit#gid=0

    • https://github.com/openedx/platform-roadmap/issues/202

    • legacy – it’s what edX (and other old community members) always used

    • lot of plugins and extra services are built directly into devstack, tutor is smaller core

    • 2U’s instance does not deploy with tutor, so they don’t have the prod-dev similarity advantage

    • MFE dev in tutor is not good yet

      • edspirit is using tutor for MFE dev, though

      •  

• Hello @Mahan Abbuspour !

@Diana Huang

• DEPRing parts of paver/pavelib

  • paver update_db in particular wasn’t working, now we’re using make migrate more

  • We’d love to throw all of paver awy

• starting conversations around how to DEPR/move things from Open edX to 2U (like devstack)

  • DEPR ticket - please leave feedback here: https://github.com/openedx/devstack/issues/907

  • Kyle proposed deprecating devstack a while ago, which has been stuck because 2U is very much still on devstack

  • Should devstack just be a 2U/edX thing rather than an Open edX thing, and we always recommend the community use tutor?

  • Date for move from Open edX to edX is 6 months out

  • Raccoon Gang and OpenCraft still use devstack. If Tutor can’t fill the same needs, we need to either update Tutor or accept that we have 2 dev environments

  • We need Axim’s legal approval to move from openedx to edx org in GH

• Trying out Orbstack, which wins almost immediately for me for not having to allocate memory up front

  • +1 -Kyle

  • https://github.com/edx/edx-arch-experiments/issues/93

  • The not having to allocate upfront thing is major since we would no longer have to keep telling people “Have you tried adding more memory?”

  • Orbstack is not free. We’re looking into free alternatives

    • Docker Desktop is still free for independent devs. As long as Orbstack remains a drop-in for Docker Desktop, it may not be a huge deal for the community

@Jeremy Bowman

• Devstack images are starting to get built for ARM. the one for credentials is up, LMS, Studio, and others are getting close.

  • Local image builds are working fine, hitting minor hiccups in setting up GHA builds correctly and with reasonable performance

• Did some research into Kubernetes learning materials. The top book recommendation seems to be The Kubernetes Book, which gets routinely updated. Plan to read that soon to learn more about how we can/can’t leverage k8s to address some of our dev env issues, may be useful for others also.

  • Note that the eBook gets free updates, paper versions don’t

@Kyle McCormick

• Tutor dev out-of-the-box is using crazy resources right now, read this for a workaround & a link to our long term fix if you’re interested: https://discuss.openedx.org/t/workaround-for-high-tutor-dev-memory-usage-in-palm-and-nightly/10717

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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 - Arch BOM has heard me complain about this a lot, but as an FYI, GitHub’s GraphQL API is awful

• for the rest API, axim likes: https://ghapi.fast.ai/

@Kyle McCormick Dave O had difficulty using library-authoring-mfe plugin for tutor-dev. Complexity arising from it being a plugin that depends on another plugin.

Successes

• DevExp wins!

@Rebecca Graber

• Some initial progress with using Grafana to display interesting dev metrics, which may be useful for more than just 2u

• Pretty convinced devstack will work on Apple Silicon once one more MFE issue is resolved with frontend-app-learning

Suggested Action Items

Last Time:

This Time:

Demos, Scheduled Topics

Live debugging: Get @Rebecca Graber a working Tutor dev env for event bus.

After the meeting…

• Make an agenda for next time (tip: copy this page).

• Axim: Paste in the Zoom link once it’s ready.

• Paste these notes and next week’s agenda in #wg-developer-experience