On Aug 12, 2014, at 11:08 AM, Doug Hellmann <d...@doughellmann.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 12, 2014, at 1:44 PM, Dolph Mathews <dolph.math...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:30 AM, Joe Gordon <joe.gord...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 6:58 AM, Kyle Mestery <mest...@mestery.com> wrote: >> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Joe Gordon <joe.gord...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > >> > >> > On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 9:03 AM, Thierry Carrez <thie...@openstack.org> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> >> >> With the incredible growth of OpenStack, our development community is >> >> facing complex challenges. How we handle those might determine the >> >> ultimate success or failure of OpenStack. >> >> >> >> With this cycle we hit new limits in our processes, tools and cultural >> >> setup. This resulted in new limiting factors on our overall velocity, >> >> which is frustrating for developers. This resulted in the burnout of key >> >> firefighting resources. This resulted in tension between people who try >> >> to get specific work done and people who try to keep a handle on the big >> >> picture. >> >> >> >> It all boils down to an imbalance between strategic and tactical >> >> contributions. At the beginning of this project, we had a strong inner >> >> group of people dedicated to fixing all loose ends. Then a lot of >> >> companies got interested in OpenStack and there was a surge in tactical, >> >> short-term contributions. We put on a call for more resources to be >> >> dedicated to strategic contributions like critical bugfixing, >> >> vulnerability management, QA, infrastructure... and that call was >> >> answered by a lot of companies that are now key members of the OpenStack >> >> Foundation, and all was fine again. But OpenStack contributors kept on >> >> growing, and we grew the narrowly-focused population way faster than the >> >> cross-project population. >> >> >> >> >> >> At the same time, we kept on adding new projects to incubation and to >> >> the integrated release, which is great... but the new developers you get >> >> on board with this are much more likely to be tactical than strategic >> >> contributors. This also contributed to the imbalance. The penalty for >> >> that imbalance is twofold: we don't have enough resources available to >> >> solve old, known OpenStack-wide issues; but we also don't have enough >> >> resources to identify and fix new issues. >> >> >> >> We have several efforts under way, like calling for new strategic >> >> contributors, driving towards in-project functional testing, making >> >> solving rare issues a more attractive endeavor, or hiring resources >> >> directly at the Foundation level to help address those. But there is a >> >> topic we haven't raised yet: should we concentrate on fixing what is >> >> currently in the integrated release rather than adding new projects ? >> > >> > >> > TL;DR: Our development model is having growing pains. until we sort out the >> > growing pains adding more projects spreads us too thin. >> > >> +100 >> >> > In addition to the issues mentioned above, with the scale of OpenStack >> > today >> > we have many major cross project issues to address and no good place to >> > discuss them. >> > >> We do have the ML, as well as the cross-project meeting every Tuesday >> [1], but we as a project need to do a better job of actually bringing >> up relevant issues here. >> >> [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/ProjectMeeting >> >> >> >> >> >> >> We seem to be unable to address some key issues in the software we >> >> produce, and part of it is due to strategic contributors (and core >> >> reviewers) being overwhelmed just trying to stay afloat of what's >> >> happening. For such projects, is it time for a pause ? Is it time to >> >> define key cycle goals and defer everything else ? >> > >> > >> > >> > I really like this idea, as Michael and others alluded to in above, we are >> > attempting to set cycle goals for Kilo in Nova. but I think it is worth >> > doing for all of OpenStack. We would like to make a list of key goals >> > before >> > the summit so that we can plan our summit sessions around the goals. On a >> > really high level one way to look at this is, in Kilo we need to pay down >> > our technical debt. >> > >> > The slots/runway idea is somewhat separate from defining key cycle goals; >> > we >> > can be approve blueprints based on key cycle goals without doing slots. >> > But >> > with so many concurrent blueprints up for review at any given time, the >> > review teams are doing a lot of multitasking and humans are not very good >> > at >> > multitasking. Hopefully slots can help address this issue, and hopefully >> > allow us to actually merge more blueprints in a given cycle. >> > >> I'm not 100% sold on what the slots idea buys us. What I've seen this >> cycle in Neutron is that we have a LOT of BPs proposed. We approve >> them after review. And then we hit one of two issues: Slow review >> cycles, and slow code turnaround issues. I don't think slots would >> help this, and in fact may cause more issues. If we approve a BP and >> give it a slot for which the eventual result is slow review and/or >> code review turnaround, we're right back where we started. Even worse, >> we may have not picked a BP for which the code submitter would have >> turned around reviews faster. So we've now doubly hurt ourselves. I >> have no idea how to solve this issue, but by over subscribing the >> slots (e.g. over approving), we allow for the submissions with faster >> turnaround a chance to merge quicker. With slots, we've removed this >> capability by limiting what is even allowed to be considered for >> review. >> >> Slow review: by limiting the number of blueprints up we hope to focus our >> efforts on fewer concurrent things >> slow code turn around: when a blueprint is given a slot (runway) we will >> first make sure the author/owner is available for fast code turnaround. >> >> If a blueprint review stalls out (slow code turnaround, stalemate in review >> discussions etc.) we will take the slot and give it to another blueprint. >> >> How is that more efficient than today's do-the-best-we-can approach? It just >> sounds like bureaucracy to me. >> >> Reading between the lines throughout this thread, it sounds like what we're >> lacking is a reliable method to communicate review prioritization to core >> reviewers. > > It seems like this is exactly what the slots give us, though. The core review > team picks a number of slots indicating how much work they think they can > actually do (less than the available number of blueprints), and then > blueprints queue up to get a slot based on priorities and turnaround time and > other criteria that try to make slot allocation fair. By having the slots, > not only is the review priority communicated to the review team, it is also > communicated to anyone watching the project. > > Doug FWIW, the way we've tracked and coordinated this within Swift is with a wiki page. Nothing fancy. I, as the PTL, keep an eye on proposed patches, bugs, etc and keep the wiki page up-to-date. Reviewers can look at that page to see what they should tackle first. This has worked well for us for quite a while now, and it was particularly useful while we were getting storage policies finished up. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Swift/PriorityReviews --John
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