Going back to my previous point.Whatever makes the preparation of Release Notes easier should drive the policy.
It sounds like Will is favouring a complete abandonment of the JIRA.Does this change the end-user's process for reporting bugs or requesting new features?
Ron On 30/06/2017 9:09 AM, Will Stevens wrote:
Back to jira. I personally have never searched jira for an issue. I search github prs for issues often though to see what code is actually pending for different issues. I dont think i am alone in that. My stance is that unless we have a solid reason for using jira which we can not solve with github at this point, we should reconsider our use of jira. Now that we have gitbox setup, i think we have the ability to use Issues as well as PRs. I think it is much wiser to keep the discussion around the code much closer to the code and not in a 3rd system. By using jira we encourage people who are contributing to the discussion to never look at the code because it is not available in the same screen. I think it is much more useful to discuss changes with the context of the code at your finger tips. Comment on specific lines of code, review the conformance to the style guide, etc... Also, I think the argument that jira somehow helps with release notes is being made by people who have never created the release notes. When using jira, you are assuming that everyone has jira in their workflow and the status of a ticket is always right. This is almost never the case and there is a huge amount of man effort to try to manage that delta. My colleague, Pierre-Luc Dion, has historically created the majority of release notes up until 4.9, when I scripted based on the PRs actually merged (as I was the 4.9 RM). My script tried to associate jira tickets if it could find them, but not every piece of code merged had a ticket (which will always be the case). There will always be a PR for a change, there wont always be a jira ticket. That alone should mean that we should be doing release notes based on the PRs and not the jira tickets. Also, Pierre-Luc does not have the time to spend a week building the release notes anymore for every release, he is a busy man... Anyway, these are my two cents. As always I am open to other opinions and points of view. I would encourage us to try to understand and pinpoint what we think adding jira to the flow actually achieves. Now that we have the gitbox integration I feel like we should move the vast majority of the development and issue related workflows closer to the code. Sorry for the wall of text... On Jun 30, 2017 6:52 AM, "Alex Hitchins" <[email protected]> wrote: Hello, I've created a DISCUSS thread to... discuss this subject separately from the original Jira issue. Sorry Paul for hijacking your Jira rant. Alexander Hitchins ------------------------ E: [email protected] W: alexhitchins.com M: 07788 423 969 T: 01892 523 587 -----Original Message----- From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 29 June 2017 20:41 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ That is what I am saying. Apache can (and does) handle donations, and there have been discussions about donations that can be directed to projects at the donation time (someone that knows about the topic could provide some help here?). So, the foundation part looks covered for me....I think we need something else. On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Marty Godsey <[email protected]> wrote:Rafael, I agree. I am not saying move away from Apache.. I am saying setup a "foundation" to handle donations and even development management.. Regards, Marty Godsey Principal Engineer nSource Solutions, LLC -----Original Message----- From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 3:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ ACS is an Apache project, not a foundation per se; donation goes toApache.I know that there is some discussion/work to create a way for donating things (not just money) to projects, but I do not know how that is going. I do not think we need to create other foundation and move away from Apache (because that is what this move would look like....) But still, I wonder, even if we had a CloudStack foundation, would that make organizations that rely on it to donate/contribute more actively? Is that the real problem? On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 3:20 PM, Marty Godsey <[email protected]> wrote:Alex, I agree.. The only "good" way that we will get more adoption is to treat it like an Enterprise product. But that would require investment. Investment with money, not just time. As an example, I use pfSense alot in my projects. If I put in a pfSense router, I take 2-5% (depends on scope) of the GDM and donate to the pfSense project. I do this because pfSense makes me a lot of money and I want it to get better.. The only way it will get better is by supporting it. And even if I was a coder, "supporting" it with codeonly goes so far.And as mentioned, we create a CloudStack Foundation that is a 501C corp so it's a non-profit and tax deductible for people donating. So the next question is who would we speak with to get this ball rolling or even a discussion started? Regards, Marty Godsey Principal Engineer nSource Solutions, LLC -----Original Message----- From: Alex Hitchins [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 1:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ If it isn't being treated as a product it will be very impossible to market it as enterprise ready. I know we all know this. Similar sized projects under the Apache banner must have the same issue, what is the best way to gather experience of these projects? See how they handle these growing pains. A cloudstack foundation entity funded by companies earning from cloudstack seems a good way forward. Another tuppence, this is getting expensive.On 29 Jun 2017, at 18:18, Ron Wheeler <[email protected]>wrote:I understand that it is a volunteer organization. I do not know how many (if any) of the committers and PMC members arefunded by their organizations (allowed or ordered to work on Cloudstack during company time) which is often the way that Apache projects get staffed.Clearly it is hard to tell someone who is being funded by a company tofix a problem or who is working on their own time, to do or not do something.On the other hand, the PMC has to build a community culture that isgood for the project.That means describing a vision, planning and enforcing a roadmap, andmaintaining a focused project "marketing" effort.There is a lot of extremely talented individuals working on Cloudstackand it appears to have a very strong and valuable code-base.To me the key question is about the PMC and the core committers' abilityto make Cloudstack a "product" that can compete for market share and acceptance.Is Cloudstack at a point in its development where it should be treatedlike a product?- sufficient functionality to compete - sufficient user base to be a competitor in the market - production reliability and stability - business model for supporting companies to justify their continued support This may not require more effort but requires different policies anddifferent activities.There has to be someone or a PMC that can say "No". - This change can not be included in this release because it will delaythe release.- This change adds an unacceptable level of complexity - This bug fix will have to wait for the next release because it is toolate to test it and fix the docs.- This fix breaks the docs - The release can not be made until this doc is updated. Does the core group want to make it a competitive product or is itsufficient for the interested players to continue in its current form?RonOn 29/06/2017 9:42 AM, Will Stevens wrote: I personally don't know how Jira solves any of this, but assuming it does, fine... The bigger problem which you have raised is that CloudStack has zero funding. So we can't hire a project manager, or a release manager or someone whose job it is to maintain documentation. I have been trying to find a way to, at the very least, fund a full time release manager who can focus 100% on the project. As the release manager for 4.9, I know it is a full time job. I did my best, but it is a ton of work and is hard to stay on top of. Everyone contributing to CloudStack is donating their time. They can't make a living off supporting ACS, so every one is doing their best with the little time they can take away from their day job ortheir family life.Yes, having clear guidelines and sticking to them helps, but without a solid CI infrastructure backing the project and improved testing and automation, we will always struggles with release schedules andsuch.I have been involved in this project long enough to know that all the problems you point out exist, but they are also not easilysolved.Obviously we have to work with the initiatives we have and take small steps towards improvement, but we also have to be realistic with our expectations because we are counting on people's generosity to movethem forward.Simplifying moving parts and streamlining the process will lead to more contribution because there is less barriers to entry. This one reason why I struggle to see the value in Jira as it isused today.I personally don't understand what value it is giving us that the github PRs and Issues don't solve. I will remain open minded and will follow along with what people think is best, but I think it is worth understanding what we are trying to solve for and simplify our approach in solving it so we can get better systems in place. On Jun 29, 2017 9:17 AM, "Ron Wheeler" <[email protected]> wrote:As a real outsider, IMHO Paul is right. At times it seems that Cloudstack is a coding hobby rather than a project or a production quality product. Who decides what goes into a release? How does this affect the release schedule? Who is responsible for meeting the "published" roadmap (of which there seem to be many) of releases? How is a system admin that is not part of the project supposed to plan for upgrade windows? How does one know when a feature, bug fix or release will beavailable?How does the PMC manage function creep in a release, maintain quality and consistency, reject changes that hurt the overall vision or add too much complexity? No one seems to care about documentation but if someone did, how would they stop undocumented features or features that contradict the documentation from being incorporated? Who makes sure that the documentation is correct at the time of the release? Release notes are not much help for someone doing a new install or evaluating Cloudstack. Without a JIRA entry, how does an end-user who encounters a problem know that it has been fixed already in the next release? Without a JIRA entry, how does the community comment on a proposed change before it gets coded? If changes are going to be accepted without a JIRA, is there a definition of a minor fix that does not require a JIRA? - does not change functionality? - only affects an "edge case" or cleans up an exception that is not properly handled? - only improves code readability or future extensibility? - does not affect documentation? Apache projects that are popular and enjoy wide support do have strong management. There are other examples where great Apache software is failing to get recognized because the PMC is not paying attention to the product management side of things. I use Apache Jackrabbit which is a quality product with a strong technical team supporting it. It has very little following because the documentation and marketing collateral is very poor. It gets by because the audience for it is largely software developers who can read code and can test features to work out thefunctionality.It would get a lot more attention if they paid attention to the product management side of the project. Cloudstack needs to avoid this situation and unfortunately this takes effort and some discipline. RonOn 29/06/2017 8:03 AM, Will Stevens wrote: Why are we still using jira instead of the PRs for that communication? Can we not use issues in github now instead of jira if someone needs to open an issue but does not yet have code to contribute. If not, jira could still be used for that. I think duplicating data between jira and the PR is kind of pointless. I feel like the github PRs and the cide going in should be the source of truth, not a random third party tool. For the 4.9 release notes, i built a tool to generate the release notes from the PRs merged in that release. I think that is easier and more accurate than depending on jira since it does not track the actual code tree. Thats my 0.02$. On Jun 29, 2017 5:25 AM, "Paul Angus" <[email protected]>wrote:Such a view of CloudStack is what holds CloudStack back. It stops users/operators from having any chance of understanding what CloudStack does and how it does it. Code for code's sake is no use to anyone. Jira is about communication between developers and to everyoneelse.Kind regards, Paul Angus [email protected] www.shapeblue.com 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue -----Original Message----- From: Daan Hoogland [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 29 June 2017 10:14 To: dev <[email protected]> Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 11:06 AM, Paul Angus <[email protected]> wrote:+ Release notes will be impossible to create without a proper + Jirahistory.And no one will know what has gone into CloudStack.No they are not mr Grumpy. they should be base on the code anyway, hence on git, not jira. I do not appose to the use of Jira but it is not required for good coding practices and as we are not and will not function as a corporation, jira is an extra for those that grave for it. not a requirement. -- Daan-- Ron Wheeler President Artifact Software Inc email: [email protected] skype: ronaldmwheeler phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102-- Ron Wheeler President Artifact Software Inc email: [email protected] skype: ronaldmwheeler phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102-- Rafael Weingärtner-- Rafael Weingärtner
-- Ron Wheeler President Artifact Software Inc email: [email protected] skype: ronaldmwheeler phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
