Build-Test-Release Biweekly 2021-03-01

Working Groups Build-Test-Release
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Build-Test-Release Biweekly 2021-03-01

We’re back with another update!

Bogus link on the meetup calendar event

Let’s start with a mea culpa: on the public google calendar we’re using to publicize our biweekly meetups, I had used the wrong URL for the Zoom meeting. That’s now fixed. If, however, you copied the event instead of subscribing to the calendar directly, make sure to update it with the correct one:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89575658344?pwd=U1VZc3hWWHBrTWdEenk1MitvS0VnQT09

My most sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Newcomers

We have two newcomers to the group from eduNext: Gonzalo Romero (@Neo) and Eric Herrera (@eric.herrera). Very glad to see you!

Roles

I’m glad to announce that we’ve filled another vacant spot on the role list: @pdpinch is now our Release Documentation Expert! Thanks, Peter!

This is where we stand now:

Since it overlaps with my other duties at OpenCraft, I decided to take the Community Liaison role as well. I am writing these updates already, anyway, right?

A proposal to track issues effectively

@BbrSofiane has posted a proposal to better track issues on Github. Make sure you hop into that thread to comment! It’ll eventually make its way into the group’s repository as an ADR.

We also discussed specific Github Projects functionality during the last meetup, and could not find any showstoppers. Looks like we’re sticking with it, at least for now.

Cutting Lilac on April 9th

The most important part of my upcoming proposal for Lilac will be increasing the time the group has to:

  • Test the release

and

  • Build release notes for the release

Specifically, this means bringing the cuttoff date for open-release/lilac.master up to April 9 (from May 9, where it would’ve otherwise been). There’ve been no objections to this idea in principle (yet!), but a couple of concerns were raised.

First, we’ll need to figure out what our process is going to be by April 9. Things like who’s going to cut the release, what is the testing process, and so on and so forth. Second, what happens if something we want to include in Lilac lands in master on April 10th? Or May 10th, for that matter? We’ve created tasks to investigate these: see the For Reference section below.

To Tutor or Not To Tutor

Even though the the Tutor ADR still has remaining issues (as reported on the previous update), the BTR group has elected to go forward with putting out Tutor as a community-supported installation method for Lilac - provisionally. This means we will embark on the work to make it happen in the expectation that the ADR will be ironed out in time, but if any show-stopping issues remain by the release date, we will simply refrain from announcing it as being officially supported by this group.

We will still support edx/configuration officially for Lilac, but if Tutor does indeed “happen”, we’ll likely add a corresponding deprecation announcement. This is so that by Maple we’ll hopefully only have to support one installation method, while also giving users time to adjust their own deployments.

For reference

In the interest of publicizing ongoing work and other topics that can benefit from recurring attention, from now on I’ll add this reference section to the updates.

New and unassigned issues

  • [#20] Before we commit to an April 9th cutoff for Lilac, let’s find out if there are any in-flight developments that we might miss out on if we do. @pdpinch is taking this on - thanks!
  • [#22] edx/notifier is now unsupported, and we need to decide what to do about that for Lilac. edx-notifications was meant to replace it, but @nedbat tells us that is also going the way of the dodo. @Maksim_Sokolskiy, do you mind assigning yourself, as discussed in the meeting? I couldn’t find your Github username.
  • [#23] We need to figure out our release process before April 9th. I’m taking this on.
  • [#5] Unassigned. We’ll need to decide whether, when, how, and who will write Juniper-Koa upgrade instructions. If nothing else, it’ll be good practice for Koa-Lilac.

Open ADRs

Postscript

That’s it! As usual, thanks for reading and feel free to discuss below.

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I want to express my gratitude to the BTR group for the work done and for the meta influence. The quality of these notes and the sense of strong group organization I get from them really help me get oriented. Thank you for being such great role models!

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And on behalf of the group, thanks a bunch for the recognition! It is safe to say that the work we’re doing is, by any definition, a true team effort. Here’s to a successful Lilac in a couple of months, and many more after! :wink: