Welcome, and thanks for stepping up Dave!
sebb wrote on 7/31/25 7:06 PM:
On Thu, 31 Jul 2025 at 18:37, Dave Fisher <w...@apache.org> wrote:
...snip...
There are many other useful tools on the Whimsy platform.
There are a LOT of other tools that different groups at the ASF use:
https://whimsy.apache.org/committers/tools
I would like to propose that this PMC start to build a Workbench platform using
Python and the ASFQuart framework using practices developed during the creation
of the new Board Agenda Tool (svn integration and svelte) and the Apache
Trusted Releases platform (uv and storage integration).
What is 'uv'? I assume it is not ultra-violet.
Good question!
I'm not sure what you mean by a Workbench platform; at present the
Whimsy Workbench is for the Secretary tooling only.
Apart from the 3 tools mentioned above, I think all the other Whimsy
tools are largely self-contained, and only share common library code,
so I am not clear what a Workbench would entail.
It's clear that "workbench" has a different meaning for the tooling team
than here in Whimsy, so each group should provide a definition if we're
going to compare things.
"Whimsy" is also overloaded as a term, it has a LOT of stuff:
- A stable server with ruby (and sinatra, passenger, rails, wunderbar,
etc. bits for full stack service) and storage and SVN/git integrations
- The ruby ASF module, which provides a rich and organized interface
into the majority of our internal data sources, like LDAP,
committee-info, Incubator, board reports, Member Meetings, and more.
- Lots of user-facing independent applications (see /committers/tools)
- A variety of utility tools and data stores that interact or are used
with groups across the ASF: /public/*.json, /site/
- The Board Agenda and Secretary Workbench applications, which include
richer functionality (and underlying server bits) than other tools.
If the Whimsy team is interested then we can setup a repository, vm host, and
start development.
Whimsy could also become the home for member developed extras like Daniel’s
ASFMM.
That's not really in the Whimsy mission as listed above.
Maybe that could be taken over by ComDev?
That code is all Python.
Taking a step back, no-one is asking the real question - the reason the
board appointed a VP, Tooling and budgeted funds to hire tooling staff.
-> How much volunteer energy do we have for maintaining and building new
tools in the Ruby ecosystem? <-
Reading Whimsy project reports shows a low and declining amount of
energy for Ruby actual work *. In our larger community, I see either
disinterest or near hostility towards Ruby as well.
Since the Infra Team has long standardized on python, the obvious next
organizational question is: how do we create a place where volunteers
can build useful and stable things like Whimsy bits, but do so in an
environment that mirrors the python world that Infra natively supports?
Because in that case, if a popular tool becomes "critical", then it's
merely a simple redeployment of the tool, not re-engineering it from our
Ruby ASF:: modules into Infra's asfquart land.
--
- Shane
Member
The Apache Software Foundation
* Note that while our amazing sebb may have the strength of 10
engineers, one human can't run a whole project alone.
