Hi Chris,
Please see replies inline

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 6:10 PM, <dev-digest-h...@climate.apache.org> wrote:

>
> I’m honestly not sure what you are talking about,


Not even one wee bit ;) maybe some of my replies will bridge the gap
between you not being sure about what I am talking about Vs disagreeing
with what I am trying to say.


> and to be honest,
> waiting 72 hours before committing everything is not a project I’d
> ever want to be on.


Well lets for a minute consider the flip side (or another possible side) of
this coin. I would never want to be on a project where patches are merged
which clearly break > 50% of the tests in the entire codebase. It seems to
me, rather detrimental to the project codebase as well as other community
members who have confidence in a codebase for patches to be committed and
merged whcih essentially break everything! Additionally, this goes against
all of the good practice I've ever learned since stumbling across TheASF
some 6 years ago! I can't word this opinion any other way.


> Like I said - if I care about a review, or
> want something to be seen by someone, fine, I can choose to ask for
> it.


Absolutely correct. I agree.


> It shouldn’t be *imposed on me*.


It seems like imposed is a strong word given the sentiment of the thread
and the openness of Mike to open it up initially to how people want to do
things. I think what we are trying to determine here is whether people feel
like things are being imposed upon them. If that ends up being one of the
outcomes of this thread then we need to accept, address, change, implement
and move on.
I consider a grace period as a politeness as well as a duration which
people can gauge the contribution(s) and comment accordingly. That is all.
It is not so people can shoot it down. That would be detrimental indeed.


> BTW Apache projects and their
> conversation need to happen at the ASF and I’m seriously concerned
> that’s not happening here. There is too much reliance on Github
> for this project.
>

I understand what you are saying here Chris. There is a lot of development
chat going on at Github. This is on an issue-by-issue bases AFAIK however,
therefore I am of the opinion that essentially this is no different from
the same conversation happening over on Jira and the same messages being
shadowed over onto dev@. The reason I say that is that (with my experiences
of mentoring Apache Usergrid) communities should not be *forced* to use
Jira over Github. The same messges are shadowed to Jira and to the Mailing
Lists. This is a nuance of the communication workflow. If this is a major
issue (we've been here before haven't we ;)) then it needs to be dealt
with. This argument has a lot of precedence at the foundation and we can
dig it up if need be.
What is your suggestion then Chris? That all correspondence is moved to
Jira? That it happens on the ML? That we find a balance between the three?


>
> Yes. Flat out. We don’t VOTE 72 hours on every line of code, or every
> patch,
> or waiting for a grace period to commit things.


There was no mention of VOTE'ing at all AFAIK. All commentary thus far has
referred to a 72 window for community commentary that was all. After this
72 hours (not months) it is absolutely cool to commit away. BTW, it is also
cool to commit away before those 72 hours. There is no Bylaws established
by OCW to state anything any different. This combined with the pre-commit
build for the project has kept builds stable on OCW for as long as I can
remember. It seems to be doing a reasonable job at keeping the test suite
stable and passing successfully. I would have thought that this practice
would have been fine given the fact that comments typically come in before
72 hours and I've seen a bunch of patches committed before 72 hours as well.


> Things that are big
> changes,
> controversial, sure, get feedback from others.


Yes. I agree.


> If I want to add a test.
> Update
> something that isn’t being used in the code base, or that doesn’t even have
> tests to show how it works one way or another? Someone should be able to
> press
> forward on that. Releases? 72 hours. New PMC/committers? 72 hours. A new
> JIRA ticket,
> etc.? Not sure we need that.
>

I think there is an issue here though. It's not this type of thing that 72
hours is in place for. It's proposed patches which break the build and test
suite and mean that others working off of master cannot keep up to date
with master. That is what the workflow guards against. Someone please
correct me if I am wrong.


>
>
> No it has to do with two people on this project (Joyce, Whitehall)
> seemingly
> to me suggesting things that Kyo continue to keep doing to his ticket
> before it should be committed - and vice versa - him in turn doing the
> same thing to their tickets and so forth.


No comment.


> And Kyo not even knowing that
> he has direct commit access to the Git repo at the ASF


That's a clear failure of the PMC and Kyo's introduction to the PMC in
communicating to Kyo that he has commit rights to the canonical source code
and that he can essentially commit whenever and whatever he likes. That
seriously needs to be addressed.


> , and honestly a
> guide
> that I was pointed to that says the primary source code base for the
> project
> is at Github (newsflash: it’s not - that’s where our *mirror* is).
>

I've never seen it so no comment. I am aware that canonical source is at
Apache.


>
> How many other people are getting batch emails?


Here or at Apache? I honestly do not have the answer to either Chris.


> Also, batch emails are good
> for catching up later, but I see most of the activity on this project being
> automated emails from JIRA and Github.


Are these automated emails not happening as a result of development issues
being discussed on either Jira or Github? My thoughts are yes.


> Lewis as a member of the foundation
> I’m sure you’re privy to the recent strife and discussion related to this
> over
> the years


Absolutely I am. I've also however seen extremely successful
Apache-compliant Github workflows dramatically increasing development and
interest in codebases. Usergrid is an excellent example of that. We really
struggled over there for a number of months with an entire PPMC nearly
opting to leave the Incubator due to what they saw as ridiculous
constraints upon what Infra wanted them to do. My justification for getting
involved in this thread is because I felt I learned a lot from that
experience and I hope I can help out here!


> - a project’s sole source of activity and conversation related to
> development cannot be automated emails from bots. We should probably be
> discussing dev related stuff in emails. That’s still the lowest common
> denominator.
>

I checked out the mailing list archives and almost every message is
generated automatically. So your point is utterly valid. I would ask if you
if you think disassociating all contextual development communication from
Jira or any other issue tracker is a wise thing to do?



>
> What are community suggestions?


I'm looking forward to hearing them.


> I see PRs from Kyo getting many suggested
> revisions from Whitehall and Joyce - and then I see similarly some issues
> when they try and push code. I see Mike being the guy to integrate and push
> PRs after review (his own and other people’s). That’s scarily like a BDFL.
>

I don't see it this way. I would be pretty convinced that Mike can speak up
here and state that he would wish others to commit their own patches.


> Yes I said it. Is Mike the merge master?


Not at all. If you check out my other thread I sent in reply to Kyo, there
are 29 Committers with write access to the codebase and 42 subscribers to
this list in all. That is a hellish impressive number of people to have on
the PMC. The truth though Chris is that is it were not for Mike then I
would have had nothing committed to the codebase! That is the reality of
the situation with most of the patches which have come to OCW. I
acknowledge and highly suggest (and expect) that this behavior will
certainly change after this thread.


> Has he thrown up a VETO on Kyo’s
> code?


I don't think so no.


> What about Whitehall?


I don't think so no.


> What about you?


No.


> That’s about the only thing
> that can stop him from committing to the code base directly.


Exactly.


> He is a PMC
> member and I’m sorry and not going to dance around the issue anymore - he’s
> not being treated like a PMC member. And I’m bringing it up and not
> sweeping
> it under the carpet.
>

This is a foreign concept to me and I was not aware that Kyo was not being
treated as a PMC member. Unless I have missed this corresponence happening
on list then I was not aware of it. The list (as you've mentioned) is the
canonical location for project communication. I've seen nothing to suggest
that Kyo is not being treated as a PMC member. I hope my enthusiasm in
trying to reply to some of his concerns today emphasize that. I just hope
it is not too little too late.


>
> I don’t think it’s working well. In fact, I know it isn't. See referenced
> email from Kyo.


I replied.


> He’s finding it difficult to contribute.


Well we need to help with that. That is the only way forward. The mailing
list is open for this kind of communication. Frustrations are all too often
voiced here which is probably too late. I would like to call out Kyo
personally and state that if you read this, and you are having an issue
contributing to the OCW codebase over and above community comments then
please let us know. We can either sit down one-to-one, in company or else
the PMC can maybe even do a casual hangout and we can resole the committer
issues.
I would like to also point you to the following resources Kyo
http://apache.org/dev/contributors.html#providingfeedback
In particular it details how to submit patches and provides guidance for
what those patches should minimally do. I quote
"

change the sourcefiles to incorporate your change or addition. Make sure
you also provide appropriate source code documentation (like javadoc for
java sources), and follow a project's coding conventions.

check the software still compiles and runs correctly

run any unit or regression tests the software may have
"
If there is any part of this or anything else which we can aid with then
please let us know on the list.



> I’ll help spell
> that out for you here in plain English. *He is a PMC member on this project
> and finding it hard to contribute*. Can I make it more clear?
>

I see stating the problem as a given. Resolving it is another kettle of
fish. We will get there though Chris :)


>
> I do. It’s too long.


Too long for what? Is development on OCW time sensitive?


> Please let me know the sacred vow that breaking
> a test on OCW causes.


Non at all. It is development code afterall and hey that is what source
code management systems are for right? Sh*t I am all for breaking project
builds I done it many times before or many projects. I am however also for
taking on board a Jenkins message which tells me I've broken a number of
tests.


> We have 0 users of the project. We are our own
> users.


This is not true Chris I am sorry. I was only talking to someone today who
mentioned a recently committed module is being used by foreign researchers.
A number of us have made efforts to grow the Climate user base and I think
we need to be very sure that no-one is using the codebase before stating
explicitly that no-one does.


> I’m going to make a scary suggestion. Push all the code!


Really ;)


> Do
> things! Talk on the dev list. Figure out how not to piss
> people like Kyo off and gain their contributions even if it means
> breaking some tests, compromising (Kyo too), but people on all sides.
>

Chris I think we are all for doing things. I hope we are getting to a stage
now where we will unearth what it is that is pissing Kyo off. We all have
an obligation as part of the PMC to support his with any committer and
developer resources he requires. This includes potentially guiding him
towards development neutral lists such as community@/community-dev@, etc. I
can't provide help to someone if I don't understand where the
pain/frustration stems from.


>
> Sorry but PMC lead is no more special than any PMC member.


No-one said he was AFAIK. My point was that Mike was engaged in a primary
development role of OCW. Whereas others were/are not.


> The person
> has an added responsibility of filing a board report and being the
> eyes and the ears of the board. I haven’t seen it come across that there
> is a concern that he’s merging everything. I have a concern. I’m bringing
> it up.
>

As you are entirely entitled to do. We are by no means at crisis point
here. There are issues which need addressing with regards to this topic.
I've TBH never seen a PMC with 29 members and only 1 person merging code.


> This PMC will have succeeded when Kyo Lee has merged and committed his own
> code to the repo. It will succeed when Mike’s not committing everyone’s
> PRs.
>

Sounds like a sure aim to me. It is not difficult. All Kyo needs to do is
as follows

$ cd climate
$ git remote add apache https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/climate.git
$ git push apache $branch


It would be real nice if you could try out a test commit Kyp to see if you
are able to do so.


>
> >
> >I would suggest that we augment the workflow to accomodate a thirst step
> >
> >3) Please make best efforts to at least consider other community comments
> >before merging. This way we can work collaboratively to all have a better
> >understanding of the codebase.
> >


Do you Chris or does anyone else have an opinion or suggestion for
augmenting the workflow or abolishing it altogether as the above thread
would suggest?
I think regardsless of what we end up deciding upon, we need to have it in
black and white on the wiki. It seems like this has become a major pain
point for Kyo less a major concern for Chris as a champion of the project
and ongoing mentor.
I would like to work together to establish a resolution. Kyo, it would mean
A LOT if you were part of this. This also goes for the other ~25 PMC
members. OCW is a significant imbalance in the community with regards to
development Vs ML correspondence and physical ML presence. An observation
and inference on my part is that this is the result of many people
basically not having the time and or cycles to actively discuss or develop
OCW in line with their day-to-day operations. This is not due to an overly
convoluted commit process. The fact that Kyo is struggling is our primary
cause for concern as loosing a valuable community member is literally a
disaster no matter what the community is and how many individuals are
associated with the community.

Any comments folks?
Thanks Chris for your comments.
Lewis

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