Re: [Pharo-dev] [ANN] Pharo 8.0 development started

[Esteban Lorenzano via Pharo-dev]

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Hi Torsten,

I think most of your concerns are due a miss-explanation about what it means 
opening P8 branch.
It does not means we are releasing P7 or stopping to work on it. It means 
people can now do pull requests that would not be accepted for Pharo 7.0 in a 
different branch.

Pharo 7.0 is not done and we are not switching to Pharo 8.0 now. This is just 
to allow some changes to be integrated without restricting people contributions 
just because P7 release is stuck because other problems.


> On 27 Dec 2018, at 21:06, Torsten Bergmann <asta...@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi Esteban,
> 
> you know I'm neither shy on contributing nor doing any work for Pharo but 
> personally I think we open Pharo 8 too early and should better focus our 
> efforts more 
> on finalizing P7 (see below) instead of opening the next construction site.
> 
> Things were already shaky and sometimes painful with P7 - nonetheless I 
> managed to get 762 commits into it. Often simple or boring PR's just to get 
> packages, classes, methods 
> in shape and clean up. Funny enough I can now say I'm on top of 
> https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/graphs/contributors ;)
> 
> I had a hard time finding out how things work in the new git/pharo/externally 
> managed projects combination - sometimes also with broken or unfinished 
> tools. A newly opened
> P8 so early adds even more on top...
> 
> Several things directly came into my mind:
> 
> 1. http://bugs.pharo.org now points to nirvana now

This is like that since a lot (not to say it shouldn’t be fixed, but to explain 
that is no blocker).
That address needs to be redirected or decommissioned.

> 
> 2. http://ci.pharo.org  point to nirvana now as well

Same. 
I think this is due some migration in INRIA servers, 
In any case, this is orthogonal.

> 
> 3. It's unclear to me what will happen to the bugtracker mailinglist archive. 
> Currently I often use it to stay informed about our changes.
>    Will it stop in december?
> 
>    https://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-bugtracker/ 
> <https://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-bugtracker/>

We should redirect pharo issues to them.

> 
> 4. The CI for Pharo 7 was not green in most of the latest commits ... and 
> situation for Pharo 8 is not even better now: RED all over on
> 
>    
> https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%20and%20branch%20Pipeline/
>  
> <https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%20and%20branch%20Pipeline/>

Is a problem in our CI, not in the image it self.
I’m not happy with it, but again this is orthogonal.

> 5. We still have dirty packages in Pharo 7 - the last remaining issue here 
>    https://github.com/pharo-ide/Calypso/issues/386
>    is still not solved and there was no reaction on Discord after reminding 
> it twice.

This needs to be solved, yes.
There was not reaction because mostly I was not around ;)

> 
> 6. Calypso still has hard issue in Pharo 7 - most of them already fixed in 
> Calypso project.
> 
>    But integration of the new Calypso version is still pending  
> https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/2115 

Yes, we know :)

> 
>    Nonetheless we already switch to P8?

We didn’t switch to P8. We open P8 dev branch.

> 
> 7. A change done lately (around 17.12.) was resetting the build numbers - so 
> for whatever strange reason we started with 1 again
>    althoug we were already at Build 1416 for Pharo 7 with all the 
> integrations.
> 
>    
> https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%20and%20branch%20Pipeline/
> 
>    This build number issue was not yet fixed although this is a serious issue 
> to compare image buils or be able to download using Launcher.

Build numbers are created /per branch/, not by job. This is a problem indeed 
but we do not have a solution for it. 
Real solution will be to change launcher to not consider build number (but take 
build date, we don’t know)

> 
>    Nonetheless we already switch to P8?

Again, we didn’t switch, we just opened. 

> 
> 8. Lately we switched the branches from "development" to "Pharo7.0" and now 
> also "Pharo8.0". This was also just announced - without any discussion
>    in advance forcing people to resetup their tools and local repos.
> 
>    This change is still not event reflected in the contribution guideline ... 
> but we already switch to Pharo 8

The full purpose of the change was to be able to have two (or more) branches 
opened simultaneously. 
And yes, there will be a Pharo8.0 (and eventually a Pharo9.0), etc. branches… 

> 
> 9. We still have lots of important and must-fix cases for Pharo 7 
>    https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/filters/1412/7-0-All 
> <https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/filters/1412/7-0-All>

I know. 
I’m almost the only one working on them.

> 
> 10. There was nothing said about backporting strategy between the new P8 and 
> P7 now…

It was said. 
Backport will happen by doing pull requests to the different, active, branch. 
Frontport (from P7 to P8) will be made in the same way, in regular basis.

> 
> 
> To me it would already help a little bit to clarify the above raised points 
> and get a more detailed info about the next P7 steps towards the release.


We still not release P7!.
 To do that, we need several things to align before: 

- 64bit windows vm
- new freetype2 version (2.9.1) in all platforms.
- Calypso glitches
- Some other cleanings (I do not remember exactly right now, I’m on holidays 
until 7/01 :P)

> 
> Independent from that I fear we constantly decouple more and more people with 
> too many process and contribution scheme changes at once. From the 
> discussions 
> on Discord I already see many people struggle - and often not only the 
> beginners.

People struggle always. 
We try to help, and to simplify. 
Some times with better results than others.
But there is no such thing as an “effortless contribution”, it was not like 
that before and it is not like that now. 

But I will write another mail about this later.

Cheers!
Esteban


> 
> Bye
> T.
> 

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