Introducing... The Open edX Build / Test / Release Working Group đź› 

Working Groups Build-Test-Release
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Dear fellow Openedxers,

We are currently in the process of creating a community-powered working group focused on building, testing and publishing the Open edX named community releases (Ironwood, Juniper, etc.) and we are looking for volunteers to join this working group.

Wait, what’s a working group?

Broadly speaking, it’s a group of people with technical proficiency in Open edX who are willing to dedicate some amount of time for the global Open edX community.

How is this organized? Is there a hierarchy? How do we fund this?

To be perfectly honest, we don’t know exactly how this working group is going to be managed :sweat_smile: This question will be one of the first items on the working group agenda. This is learning by doing at its best!

That being said, there are three core principles that the working group will adhere to:

  1. The working group will abide by the Open edX code of conduct.
  2. Open discussions: all communications should be done in the open, in a public way. For instance, we will avoid communication in private slack channels or emails.
  3. Participation will be subject to contribution: in other words, to be part of the decision process you will have to actually contribute work.

What’s the goal of the build/test/release working group?

I’m glad you asked! Our goal is to create more reliable, better documented, more sustainable Open edX community releases. EdX does not rely on community releases, internally, to power edx.org, so it makes sense for the rest of the community to step up and take responsibility for the release process.

For instance, here are some responsibilities that the working group could assume:

  • Test upcoming releases
  • Making sure that the installation, upgrade and operation documentation remains up-to-date
  • Continuous testing of community releases to make sure that there are no regression
  • Coordinate with edX on the project roadmap
  • … and generally speaking, all things related to the named community releases.

That’s great! Where do I sign?

Thanks for your interest :wink: Just reply to this topic. We’ll organise a conference call pretty soon.

Wait, who did you say you were?

Hi! :wave: I’m Régis Behmo. I’ve been part of the Open edX community since 2015 (Cypress) and the creator of Tutor, the Docker-based Open edX distribution. I’m French :fr: and live in a beautiful village of the Hautes-Alpes.

I’m looking forward to meet you y’all!

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I’ll be one of the people working on this from the edX side.

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Hi, I am Venkat. I have 5+ years experience in javascript and 1+ years of experience in python and currently working on setting up openedx server for the company I am working on, If I am eligible to be part of this working group then I would like to join.

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I would want to be part of it.

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Hey there :wave: Julien from fun-mooc.fr I think we might help as well. We have some experience in the field :sweat_smile:

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I will also be involved with this group from the edX.org side. I currently lead the DevOps team over here.

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I would liked to be involved. I don’t know how much involved I can be, but I will do my best.

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Hey there Jayram from India, count me in for this. I have 2+ years of experience in open edX.

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Hello from Chile,

I would also like to help in this working group, with one year experience managing an Open edX installation, we are currently using a docker based deployment (based on the first versions of tutor, migrated from native) and trying to automate/open source everything we can.

I would love to contribute with our experience on the development/devops/maintenance of an Open edX installation.

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Hi,

I’m Sofiane, I’m a co-founder of an Edtech start up based in Manchester (UK). We started using Open edX 6-7 months ago and we want to contribute!

Cheers

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@all,
It’s great to see such a positive response from the community! From the look of it, we’ll have to schedule our synchronous meetings at a time that works from Canada to India.

Now it’s time we meet! If you replied with “I’m interested count me in!”, or you didn’t reply but you’re interested anyway, please fill the following Doodle to agree on a date: https://doodle.com/poll/se5dihmeu2s53caz
Note that the indicated times are for the Paris timezone: https://time.is/Paris

The poll will be closed Monday evening to give everyone a chance to answer. The meeting will happen on Zoom, so please make sure to install the software prior to the meeting: https://zoom.us/download

Finally, I encourage you all to join the #build-test-release-wg channel on Slack: https://app.slack.com/client/T02SNA1T6/CK94QNCQ0

Thanks to you all! See you next week!

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@regis Thank you for organizing this! I’m interested in this working group too :slight_smile:

From OpenCraft, @toxinu and @guruprasad will likely join too, as part of their work on handling the Juniper upgrade.

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Hi there,

Such a nice initiative! As @antoviaque said, you can count on us to be part of the working group. :raised_hands:

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I would like to be involved in this group from learniphi.com

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The Doodle hath spoken! We shall meet on Friday at 2pm, Paris time at the following Zoom address: https://zoom.us/j/143531817

Meanwhile, please try to think of certain topics that you would be most interested in contributing to. Here is a tentative (far from exhaustive) list:

  • Documentation (changelog, settings, operations)
  • Maintenance of the existing Ansible playbooks
  • Testing/Documenting/Fixing the upcoming Juniper release
  • Push micro frontend adoption in the community
  • … anything else you’ll propose?

See you on Friday!

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Thanks to all the meetup participants! We shall meet again in ~2 weeks. For those who were not there, you can access the video recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_toFdSAsWJnjHXdAB9nxnx8i6nkOtOYW/view?usp=sharing
The meetup notes are available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OlGnCLUpDcziLPzTbwMaZc8HmKIAJYxGrUNnwgjWAHo/edit?usp=sharing
As most people seemed convinced that the documentation effort should be the priority, I created a new repo under the umbrella of the openedx org on github: https://github.com/openedx/handbook

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@regis Thanks for pulling us all together! And thanks for making the handbook repo. I have some thoughts about doc strategy that I put into another topic.