Community support - where do want to be in a year?

Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Kurt Taylor]

The new year is well underway, and I have started thinking about more
that could be done to enable a stronger, more open community, and to
have a better developer experience.

I'd like to get your feedback, but please, this is not meant to be a
complaint platform, reply with ideas and solutions, or at least an
open mind for how we can fix it. I want to hear ideas!

I am looking to organize a prioritized list so I (and others?) can
focus on making things happen. I am hopeful that my downstream
responsibilities will be reduced in the coming months and that we can
start making real community progress.

Incomplete list (for priming the idea pump):
1) Existing (donated?) services - Gerrit/Jenkins hosting, email
service - what about hosting? what about disaster recovery/backups?
How can we improve?
2) Automate openbmc.org wordpress content/updates, current events?
meetups? blog planet?
3) Metrics - what would the community like to see?
4) Early development plans disclosure (new features),
charter/policy/culture changes for upstream plans, improving speed to
commit, review commitments?
5) Third-party CI testing/review reporting, supported platforms,
release testing commitments

What are *your* ideas for improving the community?

Kurt Taylor (krtaylor)

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Andrew Jeffery]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, at 10:32, Kurt Taylor wrote:
> The new year is well underway, and I have started thinking about more
> that could be done to enable a stronger, more open community, and to
> have a better developer experience.
> 
> I'd like to get your feedback, but please, this is not meant to be a
> complaint platform, reply with ideas and solutions, or at least an
> open mind for how we can fix it. I want to hear ideas!
> 
> I am looking to organize a prioritized list so I (and others?) can
> focus on making things happen. I am hopeful that my downstream
> responsibilities will be reduced in the coming months and that we can
> start making real community progress.
> 
> Incomplete list (for priming the idea pump):
> 1) Existing (donated?) services - Gerrit/Jenkins hosting, email
> service - what about hosting? what about disaster recovery/backups?
> How can we improve?
> 2) Automate openbmc.org wordpress content/updates, current events?
> meetups? blog planet?
> 3) Metrics - what would the community like to see?
> 4) Early development plans disclosure (new features),
> charter/policy/culture changes for upstream plans, improving speed to
> commit, review commitments?
> 5) Third-party CI testing/review reporting, supported platforms,
> release testing commitments
> 
> What are *your* ideas for improving the community?

Make use of the Contributor Agreement Gerrit configuration if we're
going to retain CLAs going forward:

https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/config-cla.html

Andrew

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[krtaylor]

On 2/5/20 6:55 PM, Andrew Jeffery wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, at 10:32, Kurt Taylor wrote:
>> The new year is well underway, and I have started thinking about more
>> that could be done to enable a stronger, more open community, and to
>> have a better developer experience.
>>
>> I'd like to get your feedback, but please, this is not meant to be a
>> complaint platform, reply with ideas and solutions, or at least an
>> open mind for how we can fix it. I want to hear ideas!
>>
>> I am looking to organize a prioritized list so I (and others?) can
>> focus on making things happen. I am hopeful that my downstream
>> responsibilities will be reduced in the coming months and that we can
>> start making real community progress.

I created a google doc so we can organize (then prioritize). Anyone can 
add ideas or questions, in fact, please do.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QCFRGCRofcR3K8clSLtJHw10-Cu9zkp0dvwXPWzQSCc/edit?usp=sharing

>> What are *your* ideas for improving the community?
> 
> Make use of the Contributor Agreement Gerrit configuration if we're
> going to retain CLAs going forward:
> 
> https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/config-cla.html
> 
> Andrew

Thanks Andrew, good idea and definitely one I wanted to capture. I have 
moved it to the google doc.

Kurt Taylor (krtaylor)

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Patrick Williams]

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On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 06:02:01PM -0600, Kurt Taylor wrote:

One interesting thing the #yocto channel has on IRC is a bot that 
posts links whenever someone opens a Stack Overflow with a 'yocto'
tag.  I think we need a better mechanism to help with "drive by"
questions.

This was pointedly said in the IRC and I certainly agree with it:

    ------: I realize ------ is asking a lot of basic questions that most
    of us would normally answer by reading the code and experimenting.
    They are highlighting major gaps in documentation though

We often have introductory questions on IRC and mailing list that go
unanswered.  So, having a Stack Override bot wouldn't do anything if
people don't take turns answering.

-- 
Patrick Williams

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Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[krtaylor]

On 2/7/20 10:30 AM, Patrick Williams wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 06:02:01PM -0600, Kurt Taylor wrote:
> 
> One interesting thing the #yocto channel has on IRC is a bot that
> posts links whenever someone opens a Stack Overflow with a 'yocto'
> tag.  I think we need a better mechanism to help with "drive by"
> questions.

Yes! maybe a variant of the meetbot functionality to monitor SO - may 
require channel logging, we'd need everyone to be comfortable with that.

Thanks, I'll add that to the list...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QCFRGCRofcR3K8clSLtJHw10-Cu9zkp0dvwXPWzQSCc/edit?usp=sharing

Kurt Taylor (krtaylor)


> This was pointedly said in the IRC and I certainly agree with it:
> 
>      ------: I realize ------ is asking a lot of basic questions that most
>      of us would normally answer by reading the code and experimenting.
>      They are highlighting major gaps in documentation though
> 
> We often have introductory questions on IRC and mailing list that go
> unanswered.  So, having a Stack Override bot wouldn't do anything if
> people don't take turns answering.
> 

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Patrick Williams]

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On Fri, Feb 07, 2020 at 11:58:16AM -0600, krtaylor wrote:
> require channel logging, we'd need everyone to be comfortable with that.

I already have my znc set up to log everything.  I wouldn't be surprised
if others do as well.

A long while ago I intended to publish them in an archive but never got
around to it and never found a good way to render them on a webpage.

I have logs starting at 2015-12-08 but with a break from 2018-08-23 to
2019-01-04 when my znc went down and I didn't notice it for a few
months.

-- 
Patrick Williams

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Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Johnathan Mantey]

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Kurt,

I would like to see a more developer friendly unit test framework.
I have had only a couple of occasions where I needed to run the test suite.
My most recent attempt was not successful because my test repo was out
of sync with the remainder of the OBMC infrastructure.
I would like to see:

 1. A way to test my changes within the framework of more than one repo.
 2. A less heavy handed, quicker turn time test sequence


-- 
Johnathan Mantey
Senior Software Engineer
*azad te**chnology partners*
Contributing to Technology Innovation since 1992
Phone: (503) 712-6764
Email: johnathanx.mantey@intel.com <mailto:johnathanx.mantey@intel.com>


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Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Brad Bishop]

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 10:24 AM, Johnathan Mantey <johnathanx.mantey@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Kurt,
> 
> I would like to see a more developer friendly unit test framework.
> I have had only a couple of occasions where I needed to run the test suite.
> My most recent attempt was not successful because my test repo was out of sync with the remainder of the OBMC infrastructure.
> I would like to see:
> 
> 	• A way to test my changes within the framework of more than one repo.

can you elaborate on this?

> 	• A less heavy handed, quicker turn time test sequence

What is a rough target for your desired turn time?

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Brad Bishop]

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 10:24 AM, Johnathan Mantey <johnathanx.mantey@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Kurt,
> 
> I would like to see a more developer friendly unit test framework.
> I have had only a couple of occasions where I needed to run the test suite.
> My most recent attempt was not successful because my test repo was out of sync with the remainder of the OBMC infrastructure.
> I would like to see:
> 
> 	• A way to test my changes within the framework of more than one repo.
> 	• A less heavy handed,

I assume the heavy-handed part is the need for docker?

Re: Community support - where do want to be in a year?

[Johnathan Mantey]

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Brad,

The current test flow, when I tried yesterday, doesn't do well when the
current repo relies on some other chunk of the code base to succeed.

For example:
DBus changes an established item from bool to enum
Networkd uses the new enum type.

Git clone phosphor-networkd, run test.
Docker creates a new machine, populates the new machine, fetches the
code, from the upstream (which won't have the DBus), wait 20 or more
minutes, witness a failure.

It would be great to use my current devtooled state, and get the test
suite run with my current development state.
The phosphor-network test suite probably runs in under 1 minute.

I should be able to tweak code, run tests, see failure readily, tweak
code, rinse repeat.
I don't need the same level of verification that the QA team does.
Destroying the machine, and rebuilding it doesn't provide value.
If tests were quick to run there might be more incentive to creating
more tests.
As it stands, it is too onerous to bother.

On 2/14/20 8:33 AM, Brad Bishop wrote:
>
>> On Feb 14, 2020, at 10:24 AM, Johnathan Mantey <johnathanx.mantey@intel.com> wrote:
>>
>> Kurt,
>>
>> I would like to see a more developer friendly unit test framework.
>> I have had only a couple of occasions where I needed to run the test suite.
>> My most recent attempt was not successful because my test repo was out of sync with the remainder of the OBMC infrastructure.
>> I would like to see:
>>
>> 	• A way to test my changes within the framework of more than one repo.
>> 	• A less heavy handed,
> I assume the heavy-handed part is the need for docker?

-- 
Johnathan Mantey
Senior Software Engineer
*azad te**chnology partners*
Contributing to Technology Innovation since 1992
Phone: (503) 712-6764
Email: johnathanx.mantey@intel.com <mailto:johnathanx.mantey@intel.com>


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