Maintenance Working Group Meeting – 2024/08/22 08:59 EDT – Transcript

Attendees

Adolfo Brandes, Awais Qureshi, Feanil Patel, Feanil Patel's Presentation, Kyle McCormick, Kyle McCormick's Presentation, Maksim Sokolskiy, Michelle Philbrick, Piotr Surowiec, Robert Raposa, Sarina Canelake

Transcript

Robert Raposa: simulator tab

Kyle McCormick: Hey Robert.

Robert Raposa: I'm going to step away for about 30 seconds or so. I'll be right back.

Kyle McCormick: That's good.

Adolfo Brandes: Hello.

Kyle McCormick: Morning, Adolfo.

Adolfo Brandes: Kyle when you rubber

Kyle McCormick: Forever says he'll be back in just a minute.

Feanil Patel: If they have pretty fast meeting today, I think.

Adolfo Brandes: that's cool.

Michelle Philbrick: Lola

Adolfo Brandes: She here.

Kyle McCormick: Nice catch Michelle just the ear in the corner. good cat

Michelle Philbrick: I'm always on the lookout.

Feanil Patel: events

Robert Raposa: practices

Feanil Patel: But it share mice really.

Robert Raposa: it's

Feanil Patel: We're gonna have a lot more banter on these recordings now that it starts auto recording.

Kyle McCormick: Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: There's always a drawback.

Michelle Philbrick: mostly

Kyle McCormick: sure, there's

Feanil Patel: I think it's okay.

Kyle McCormick: I'm sure there's an AI tool that can identify the actual start of the meeting from for us.

Feanil Patel: The meeting is now starting.

Adolfo Brandes: Get a clacker.

Feanil Patel: All right, good morning afternoon and evening everybody. Welcome to the maintenance working group. Let's get started with the usual checking back in on previous to news. We've got a topic for next time for edx platform. I believe that was

Feanil Patel: so I'll just add that down here.

Feanil Patel: and then

Adolfo Brandes: I have a BTR thing.

Feanil Patel: okay.

Feanil Patel: that means yes looking at the and then I have

Feanil Patel: maybe it won't be it with meeting. Yeah, maybe I should say that every time.

Robert Raposa: Mine might be at X platform related. I'm not sure but I'm the ex-block work that's going on.

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Robert Raposa: I just wanted to check in with that and that's some questions and stuff.

Feanil Patel: All right.

Feanil Patel: All right, I'll start off first. I've been looking at the Ubuntu upgrade across our system and in particularly, sort of after this discussions last week as I was looking through that I asked myself seriously whether it made sense to Try to jump to 2204 or 20 jump to a targeted named release or use github's provided Ubuntu latest, which is a tag that I assume they will move. in the future to newer releases I think the only place I could come up where it made sense not to do that was in code jail where we want to test explicitly with specific Versions of Ubuntu and in particular app armor, it's the one that depends most on the underlying system.

00:05:00

Feanil Patel: For the rest, I believe any Ubuntu that can install the relevant system packages which are only relevant for edx platform and our documented in that repo. Should work with any Ubuntu so that was just thinking we would update our testing to test with latest and therefore reduce our future test burden by not having to do this again in the future. So

Feanil Patel: I am mentioning it here in case you guys have feedback. I'm gonna update the ticket to that effect and then I do need help. I think making that change across all of the repos. We find the maintenance ticket. And I'll link that here as well. I did make the underlying. issues or all of the repos

Feanil Patel: so that we can track what needs to be done. So that's all in this ticket that I've just linked.

Feanil Patel: And that's everywhere. We're 2404 is mentioned or 22 204 is mentioned.

Feanil Patel: so Fort Robert

Robert Raposa: and I think the two questions I have one Should there be exceptions and should Alex platform with code jail being exception or is it not really affect anything to I guess It depends, where we're using it within that X platform and…

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Robert Raposa: maybe for the tests It's fine.

Robert Raposa: so it's a question.

Robert Raposa: and the other this is A related question. I was wondering about this ticket Is there a Decker and should there be a Deborah mostly even if there's not I mean just mostly around dates. I know you had. an interest having changes made at one point time, obviously if we move to Ubuntu latest, you'll have that concern once and…

Feanil Patel: Yeah. Yeah, That's kind of my thought.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, My current thinking was that we would Dipper Ubuntu 2004 once and…

Robert Raposa: Maybe never again.

Robert Raposa: I don't know so.

Robert Raposa: performing

Feanil Patel: moved to latest and that deprecation it would have essentially the things I've just said in it.

Feanil Patel: as rationale and then

Feanil Patel: for any sea for any CI that uses 2004 today we would have 2004 and…

Robert Raposa: okay, and go ahead.

Feanil Patel: Ubuntu latest testing for six months

Feanil Patel: and then after that it would just drop support for 2004

Robert Raposa: All right, because you had mentioned something about the dates and how you didn't you were hoping that it would be less than six months.

Feanil Patel: So yeah. Yeah.

Robert Raposa: And so it would just be great to have your dates and…

Feanil Patel: We can comment there. But yeah,…

Robert Raposa: wishes some place so that I could attach it to

Feanil Patel: I can do that. That I think I always wanted to be shorter,…

Robert Raposa: okay.

Feanil Patel: but I'm sure I think we'll just say six months and if there's an issue the reason that I remember the detail is that there are lots of workflows where it doesn't make sense to run them twice. And for those we'll just move to the new. Tube into this part publishing the i Pi linting and a couple of other things that aren't dependent on the underlying python 0.2 version. I think we should just move. And I'll mention that in the deprecation ticket so that the discussion can be had up there. But yeah,…

Robert Raposa: yeah.

Feanil Patel: thank you for that around here.

Robert Raposa: But I thought you also mentioned that you wanted it in on a named release. It was gonna hit before six months or something of that nature because of when it Actually,…

Feanil Patel: That's more a question for tutor.

00:10:00

Robert Raposa: but I don't know if that's true.

Feanil Patel: I think tutor should be running on. 22 or 2404 before Sumac because of when 2004 goes out of support. but That shouldn't affect any Master operators like yourself.

Robert Raposa: Okay, but is it?

Robert Raposa: You got it, okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, absolutely. we will basically have September to get all of this landed.

Feanil Patel: Yes.

Feanil Patel: right

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Feanil Patel: It is.

Feanil Patel: And to be clear that's not work that needs to happen by operators. Great. Yeah, yeah.

Feanil Patel: Okay.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, it's definitely a short timeline for maintenance and in the future. Hopefully if we just do it the latest we don't have to do this again, and that just reduces overall maintenance Burton for everybody.

Feanil Patel: It's kind of I thinking. But I'll capture all that in that part ticket. this week

Feanil Patel: Okay.

Feanil Patel: Adolfo you want to go on the next topic?

Adolfo Brandes: 

Adolfo Brandes: Sure also I just wanted the tutor situation remember they were considering moving to the python Upstream image, but apparently that's longer a target for sumac.

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, Regis came by last maintenance working group.

Adolfo Brandes: Okay. great.

Feanil Patel: We had a chat about it. Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, I invited them but I couldn't make it last time so.

Feanil Patel: No, he was here and we talked through it and pointed out that code jail is a critical requirement.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah.

Feanil Patel: So it was happy it made a lot of sense to him and he was happy that it's a sort of revisit that later.

Adolfo Brandes: Okay, great. All right.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, thank you for connecting us with them.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, great that it worked. Perfect. So the next thing is something should have brought last meeting. We had a release retrospective or redwoods that ended a couple weeks ago at BTR and one of the many things that came up was How can we get more maintenance involvement as the sort of patch phrase right that can mean a lot of things and…

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: including not just maintenance right? So basically help fixing issues.

Feanil Patel: right

Adolfo Brandes: and I was tasked with bringing sort of a rough idea of what we're thinking here and I outlined that in the page and it's basically we want to have a single board that's going to capture all the issues including the testing issues We have a test plan for each release and the goal is for sumac to have an issue on that board for each of those tests. Right as well as issues that are caught outside the official testing. So anyway, the point is a single GitHub board with all of the issues of a release. And they will be marked.

Adolfo Brandes: When they're released blockers at least and maybe some other form of marking to clearly prioritize which ones BTR judges to be more important, and the hope is that maintenance during that release testing window will keep an eye on that and if they see something a critical issue that they think they could help with that they'd be free to start working on it right away without us having to ask each maintenance individually.

00:15:00

Adolfo Brandes: And of course that window will be announced probably here in this meeting as discussion forums Etc. So internally red finale we discussed how far we want to take. Getting maintenance involved and…

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: I think as a first tab, it's just going to be an informal like hey look, can you keep an eye on this?

Adolfo Brandes: And BTR will also of course try and tag maintenance whenever we feel. we could benefit from maintenance attention?

Feanil Patel: Yeah, yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: Also we are aware. There are cc's to help with this as well. And also PRS don't need to come just from CC's or maintenance. They could come from anybody in the community. It that it would be nice. For instance when there are repositories where nobody in BTR has any expertise in that we could talk to the About how to particular issue right even if the maintenance is not going to fix it.

Feanil Patel: Just the approach and…

Adolfo Brandes: a yeah. Yeah.

Feanil Patel: where to go. Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. the maintenance either should have that knowledge or should be willing to acquire that knowledge as the maintenance of a repository and help with debugging.

Adolfo Brandes: basically help a little with even…

Feanil Patel: Yeah. Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: if not with creating PRS. particularly with important or blocking issues

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, that's the real idea. Yeah.

Feanil Patel: That makes yeah. Yeah. are the issues that are created on this board going to be on the repos where they are relevant. So

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah.

Feanil Patel: because One of the things I think that tainers there's difficulty is that people are already watching too many boards, and I'm wondering if we can ask maintenance to Simply look for specific labels in the repos. They maintain or something. Simpler…

Adolfo Brandes: That's fair.

Feanil Patel: where they don't have to watch more boards, but they can just look out for things in the spaces where they're already supposed to be looking.

Adolfo Brandes: I think that's completely fair. So. Since of course issues from any repos can be on a board BTR can look at the board and then we move the issues to the once we find out where the issue actually is in terms of in the code. We'll be glad to move them to the Repository.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, that sounds great. And I think that will help us maintenance like involvement in the way that we want to moving forward. So I think that

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, that's fair. that's an important. detail make sure to move the ticket to the repo so that maintenance don't have to be looking. at the board

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, that's fair. I'll take this back to BTR. I don't think anybody's going to object.

Sarina Canelake: Clear that you're going to be able to move the issues because a lot of times the testers have literally no clue where the bug is coming from. They're like A product manager and they're clicking around and they're like, this button is broken.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, yeah. And that's likely be the bug tree ideas three others rule.

Sarina Canelake: so I think being just making it clear where everybody's roles lie. the ultimate end goal we want is these bugs are triage to the right repo, but we don't want to prevent people from reporting bugs if they don't know where the bug is from.

Feanil Patel: Absolutely. Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah.

Kyle McCormick: Yeah. They might need to be a step where Treasures look up maintenance so that they can ask questions to figure out which repo the bug goes to. so I think this implies that maintenance should be watching their GitHub notifications like for pings

Feanil Patel: There and…

Kyle McCormick: otherwise they might

Feanil Patel: should be on the discussion forums for potential. Yeah, I guess it brings on the BTR issues you're saying Kyle?

00:20:00

Kyle McCormick: I guess yeah, unless this goes to ck. as much as I want to say everybody needs his own notifications for everything. another might be unrealistic so

Adolfo Brandes: And I mean the BTR roles somewhere in there somebody's going to try and reach out. the best of their ability right and…

Kyle McCormick: Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: That includes trying to get some response somewhere, right?

Feanil Patel: Yeah, and I think that part of the process is probably going to be the most fuzzy because it involves individuals notification settings across systems. So as you guys try that out and…

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah, yeah.

Feanil Patel: you find what is and isn't working. Definitely let's loop back around and see we're as a maintainer you should already be getting notifications on the repos that you maintain if it makes sense for them to also get notifications when they are specifically mentioned in the BTR repo that is a thing that we should figure out if that's a requirement of being a maintainer and then update documentation and update expectations.

Adolfo Brandes: Yeah total I figure from other conversations that I maintenance should at least keep an eye on what's happening in the repo. issues PRS are opens if at some point in the future This is a baseline. I think that would be more than enough, But in the meantime, yeah, it's fuzzy will figure it out.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: Yep, that's it.

Feanil Patel: Okay.

Adolfo Brandes: Thank you.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, thank you. Michelle

Michelle Philbrick: Yeah, I guess just looking for maybe some additional context Kristen from the two utnl team. On one of the PR's and fun and that course authoring she mentioned that the front end. Library content components one is going to merge into course offering. And I just wanted to double check on that because she asked me to leave some comments on the PRS because it looks like people might need to reopen PRS because they'll be closed when the repos merge. So I wasn't aware of it. So I just wanted to bring it to the group and see if anyone had any additional contacts on it before I start leaving comments.

Adolfo Brandes: 

Adolfo Brandes: So the only context I have is that I had an inkling that this might happen.'s but I'll be glad to help coordinate the stuff.

Michelle Philbrick: Okay.

Adolfo Brandes: I just don't know. how many PRS we're talking about and which ones are more important than others.

Michelle Philbrick: Yeah, I don't.

Adolfo Brandes: quality glad to take a pass at it in case

Michelle Philbrick: Essentially the ask was can you add comments to the open PRS that they'll be closed when this is merged if they would like the work to still be merge. They'll need to open a PR in the course authoring repo.

Adolfo Brandes: What is that a sort of automated message at a portal PRS or? Are we?

Michelle Philbrick: no, I think it's just alerting people that have open PRS in the front end the components repo that repo is being merged and that they'll need to reopen it in the fun and the course authoring repo. Yeah.

Adolfo Brandes: I'm looking at it now. They're 11 yards.

Michelle Philbrick: Yeah, it's not a…

Adolfo Brandes: I think it's Yeah.

Michelle Philbrick: I just didn't know much about it. So before I went ahead and started doing that. I just wanted to make sure that everything was all set.

Feanil Patel: 

Feanil Patel: I think an alternative proposal. Would be to review and merge or close those PRS before moving all of that content.

Adolfo Brandes: Yes.

Feanil Patel: Which would be a very reasonable thing to do I think.

Michelle Philbrick: so that's a touchy subject because a lot of those have been open for a very long time. And there's stop and…

Feanil Patel: no, I see that but also

Michelle Philbrick: the T&L had mentioned before that. they're maintaining it but I don't know if it was. a priority necessarily so

00:25:00

Michelle Philbrick: I think Jeremy had mentioned it was okay to give it to CC's if possible if things needed review so I don't yeah, I mean I can go back to Kristen with that and ask if that's possible, but Kyle

Kyle McCormick: Yeah, I suspect that some of these Po's are gonna be really old and I don't want to stop from making this change because it's a positive change. That said I find it a little weird that they're asking you to do this for them.

Michelle Philbrick: Yeah.

Kyle McCormick: They're the maintainer they…

Feanil Patel: Yeah, then they can do it.

Kyle McCormick: They have the best context they know You don't know when this marriage is gonna happen Michelle they do they can go to these PRS but a copy-based message in close 11prs.

Kyle McCormick: My recommendation is that you just kick that aspect of them.

Michelle Philbrick: Okay.

Sarina Canelake: Yeah, if you wanted to be helpful, you could provide some sample language. I mean I think one thing I keep finding is that it's so hard to close PRS people don't want to close PRS and I think there's a hesitancy to do so in part because they don't know what they're gonna say. It's just like in Adolfo was saying about maintenance being available for BTR issues. It's like what do maintainers say if they're not available? I mean, you need to say you need to say I am not free, right but We need people to actually sometimes say something a little bit negative or I can't help or I'm on vacation or whatever the case is in this case if they need to close PRS. They need to do it and it should come from them. But maybe you could say you need some help in figuring out the right words.

Michelle Philbrick: Okay.

Michelle Philbrick: Sounds good.

Robert Raposa: and Michelle, are you in contact with someone from Jeremy happens to be on vacation this week and Okay.

Michelle Philbrick: No, I was going to plan to just reach out to Kristen since she's the one that left the comment.

Robert Raposa: Yep, that sense.

Michelle Philbrick: It okay.

Robert Raposa: That sounds great. And I just want to let you know that Jeremy is on vacation. So if you need Jeremy's support,…

Michelle Philbrick: Okay. Thank you.

Robert Raposa: that'll be next week. Okay.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, that's great.

Feanil Patel: All And think Michelle you've got what you need.

Feanil Patel: The commerce deprecation that's this conversation right here. I wanted to follow up on this because there's been some back and forth on that thread but the upshot is basically there people who want to maintain the back ends, but no interest in the front ends. And also only as far as I can gather, it's multiple people but all will start working on one project for one organization. Given that information I'm leaning towards. Proceeding with the deprecation of commerce, but I wanted to sort of talk that through with other people.

Feanil Patel: they have been following along and have different opinions.

Sarina Canelake: I have an opinion. I mean, I think I raise this when I was trying to deprecate Cyprus and…

Feanil Patel: Is it?

Sarina Canelake: Max raced his hand and I really wanted to say way what he was offering with the benefits for the community because his organization uses these end tests and I wasn't getting a sense necessarily that other organizations were but the difference was he is committing to doing some amount of work. Or the community, right what a year on the call Max, I like to hear, I want to bring some of this to BTR. I think we can really amplify the use of this for the community and when We're going to deprecate a component and just one organization raises their hand and says this is useful to me and I want to develop it for my organization. I think that is the case where we have said in previous situations. We should continue with the deprecation and they can Fork it and continue to develop it in their own org.

Feanil Patel: Thanks for that.

00:30:00

Sarina Canelake: So given the information I haven't been following along but given the information you just relayed. That would be my inclination.

Feanil Patel: that's sort of where I'm leaning to so I appreciate the sound like the reassurance and agreement on that line of thinking because yeah It's Tricky when somebody wants to maintain pieces of a thing because I do want to support what the community needs but I think this is a situation where The uses are not I can't imagine a pathway where commerce sort of Turns around and becomes a thing that everybody in the community wants to use given sort of the complexity and level of technical debt that's living there.

Feanil Patel: All right in that case, I will write some replies and that'll be the other deprecation that I create master writing these down because now

Kyle McCormick: Speaking of repos and…

Feanil Patel: and that's

Kyle McCormick: writing a registered application right now. this will be a surprise to anyone who's involved in register.

Feanil Patel: okay.

Feanil Patel: Okay.

Feanil Patel: We are at 3933 and we are switching over to edx platform specific topics. It looks like so good timing everybody if you were here just for the Full maintenance working group and you don't have edx platform specific things to feel free to drop off. If you want to stick around for the platform sure talk about the X block work first. I think that's less ended. So maybe just a quick update there makes more sense. And then the resiliency topic I think is more ended.

Feanil Patel: Robert you want to ask a starting question or do you I just looking for an update.

Robert Raposa: No, I can ask my starting question which might sound more ended than you'd imagine which is more. Maybe this has been discussed already. It's the kind of work that. Seems like it could be. Potentially risky again and again for our deployments and I'm just wondering if we could have it could be here. It could be otherwise brainstorming ideas of how to minimize risk, because I know the risk is really

Feanil Patel: Yeah, yeah. It just happens to break you first,…

Robert Raposa: Our risk, but it's like all for the community,…

Feanil Patel: but it'll break everybody.

Robert Raposa: right?

Robert Raposa: Exactly, but It would have broken everybody. so yeah, so how can we make these kinds of changes and…

Feanil Patel: right

Robert Raposa: have it be minimized risk, and we've got in internal conversations around potential pipeline improvements and things like that to minimize some stuff but it would be great to Discuss that know if that's already been discussed and there's already an agreement of here's…

Kyle McCormick: Gonna take it right here for your Robert that I think you should check out.

Robert Raposa: how these will, more carefully be launched or whatever. So that's fine.

Kyle McCormick: That's basically a rollout plan.

Feanil Patel: Yeah, the experimentally enabled one as I think the one you want to take a look at.

Robert Raposa: and the man

Robert Raposa: Fairfax wants to restart before letting me know can you piss the link in…

Kyle McCormick: Sure thing. Yeah, in…

Kyle McCormick: I'll share my screen too.

Robert Raposa: Chat as well just for me.

Robert Raposa: Yeah. Thank you.

00:35:00

Robert Raposa: and should

Robert Raposa: just review this. Extract of fun. Sorry taking notes at the same time that I'm trying to talk.

Robert Raposa: yeah, maybe I'll just review and just see…

Kyle McCormick: Yeah.

Robert Raposa: if I have any thoughts of Possible improvements I feel like I read. That yeah,…

Feanil Patel: Yeah, yeah and for what it's worth we had a discussion about implementing this morning.

Robert Raposa: I don't know so I should get caught up on this again.

Feanil Patel: So it's very timely and a good time to sort of have more input about things you might want to change about this because the work hasn't started but it will start to

Kyle McCormick: 

Robert Raposa: You got it. And does this feel I mean it so again, stop me if the answer is just read this first, but the questions with the toggles is everything set up for it's basically like

Robert Raposa: the code will be there and you don't have to worry about it and…

Feanil Patel: yeah.

Kyle McCormick: that

Robert Raposa: you'll just yield test on your own time with the toggles and then

Feanil Patel: Yeah.

Robert Raposa: And yeah, and I guess there's no other way to sort of. Other than tuggling it on. What we're using waffle so we could also do a slow rollout percentage rollout.

Kyle McCormick: you could yeah, I was gonna have them make course waffles just to give maximum flexibility to operators.

Feanil Patel: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the way to go because I think doing a percentage roll out might be.

Robert Raposa: Yep.

Feanil Patel: complex because I don't think it doesn't have user Affinity, So a user might get it does.

Kyle McCormick: It does. Yeah, it's a welcome feature and…

Feanil Patel: Okay. that's