HBase Developers, In conjunction with the recent HUG11 (http://hbaseblog.com/2010/07/04/hug11-hbase-0-90-preview-wrap-up/) we also held the fourth HBase Hackathon at Facebook.
At this hackathon, we spent a bit of time at the end in a discussion of ways to improve HBase outside of normal feature development. Specifically the focus was on Usability, Documentation, and Public Relations, with an emphasis on getting people to take ownership over different things. Notes from the meeting below. The discussion was loosely guided by these slides: http://hbaseblog.com/files/HBase_Hackathon_4_Slides.pdf USABILITY - Add the option for our scripts to start/stop an HDFS cluster like we do with ZK (no owner) (HBASE-2811) - Configuration improvements (owned by jgray and larsgeorge) + Better documentation of what is important (currently too confusing) (HBASE-2328, also HBASE-2006 is an old but related jira about documenting config) + Document what has changed between versions in one place + Ship with sample configs (HBASE-2377) + Configuration automagic (ask questions, generates config) and verification (for example, to test cross-version) tools + Wasn't discussed at the hackathon but also related is HBASE-2056, better defaults for configs - Automated verification (owned by andrei and cosmin) + ulimit, etc (HBASE-2750) + HDFS + JVM versions (RS->M info, JMX) DOCUMENTATION - Specific getting started guides + Three primary types of new users, should make a guide for each: 1) Just want to play on one node, no previous hadoop experience 2) Want a real cluster but have no hadoop experience or existing hdfs cluster 3) Want a real cluster and already have an existing hdfs cluster + Don't bury everything in javadoc + wiki - Instead of spreading documentation around javadoc, wiki, posts, etc... we will do a "Book" per release (owned by todd and also wade?) + No final decision on format, maybe docbook? + HBASE-2650 PUBLIC RELATIONS - Stream and record meetups + Will be done for the next HUG (jgray) - HBase Blog + Created hbaseblog.com, will also be blog.hbase.org (jgray) + This is a community blog, any committer/contributor is welcome to post! Talk to jgray to get an account created. - HBase.org and logo + Work in progress. Currently owned by stack. Thanks to everyone who participated. JG
