General Infrastructure Maintainability: API and EBN
Hi all, Over the past number of years one of the tasks the Sysadmin team has worked on has been improving the overall maintainability of our systems, with a significant number of specialised cronjobs, exceptions and hidden linkages being eliminated. That is with one great exception: api.kde.org and ebn.kde.org. Both of these are suffering from an extreme amount of digital bitrot and special casing and in general are now in a condition where I cannot say for certain whether it would be possible to replicate the setup on a new system without us experiencing some degree of breakage (some of which we may not discover until weeks/months afterwards). In addition, the current setup relies on an old-fashioned overnight reprocessing of all repositories, which is inefficient and resource expensive. A more modern approach would have the various projects api documentation generated on a delayed cycle from relevant branches as part of something like a CI job (but not part of the actual CI workflow itself). For this one, i'm not certain on the best path forward at this stage, however the current state of affairs cannot continue. We have tried over the past few years to find people to work on a replacement for the tooling involved, but alas we've yet to have success here. Thoughts anyone? Regards, Ben
Sysadmin Load Reduction: Subversion Infrastructure
Hi all, When KDE committed to performing a migration to Git back in 2010, one of the things that was agreed at the time was that translators could remain on Subversion to avoid disrupting their workflows. This however has led to a certain amount of additional infrastructure which Sysadmin needs to continue to maintain. In recognition of the fact that with few exceptions, everything has now migrated from Subversion aside from Translations, i'd like to reduce the level of infrastructure supporting our Subversion repository to the bare minimum necessary. This would include the shutdown of WebSVN in particular, which when coupled with the shutdown of our two CGit instances would also allow for us to eliminate an entire virtual machine from our systems. On top of this, i'd also like to remove commit access to it for everyone but translators and those who need to work on the small number of websites remaining on Subversion and only provision this for people on an as-needed basis. In the next year or so i'd expect the remaining websites to complete their migrations to Git, after which only translators would receive access. We would also cease providing geographically distributed anonsvn service, with anonymous access only being provided by the master server going forward. Any comments? Thanks, Ben
Sysadmin Load Reduction: Legacy Compatibility Redirects
Hi all, One of the more smaller things that Sysadmin currently looks after is a large number of legacy compatibility redirects, which keep a variety of subdomains under KDE.org functional. For the most part these refer to dead projects, and have been legacy compatibility redirects for many years (5+) now. Given that sites should have now had a chance to update themselves, i'd like to go ahead and remove a number of these redirects. These redirects, whilst appearing relatively minor in nature, do require a certain degree of custom logic on the server side to handle them and therefore collectively create maintenance burden that in many cases probably outweighs the value they provide. We therefore should only retain them if there are places we are still unable to update which someone may need to follow (and not simply because 'somewhere might still link there') given that most people find things through their preferred search engine now. Below are a list of all the redirect candidates: -- kate.kde.org accessibility.kde.org books.kde.org buzz.kde.org de.kde.org dolphin.kde.org es.kde.org evolve.kde.org gwenview.kde.org kaffeine.kde.org kmail.kde.org kmobiletools.kde.org kopete.kde.org korganizer.kde.org korganizer.org lokalize.kde.org people.kde.org phonon.kde.org pim.kde.org kdepim.org kdepim.com plasma.kde.org solaris.kde.org themes.kde.org usability.kde.org vdesign.kde.org windows.kde.org women.kde.org yakuake.kde.org contour.kde.org brainstorm.forum.kde.org research.kde.org akregator.kde.org nepomuk.kde.org in.kde.org people.kde.org mac.kde.org kdevelop.kde.org ar.kde.org -- Any comments? I'd also like to be able to recommend to the KDE e.V. Board that we permit kdepim.org, kdepim.com and korganizer.org to expire at the end of their current registration period. Thanks, Ben
Sysadmin Load Reduction: Code Related Services
Hi all, In the category of code related services, Sysadmin currently supports a wide-ranging number of services (which makes sense given the nature of the community). Some of these however may no longer be in use or will be duplicative of other services following the transition to Gitlab. In the category of duplicative, we have our two CGit instances at cgit.kde.org and packaging.neon.kde.org. Prior to Gitlab, these were justifiable as there was no other way of browsing scratch/clone repositories over the web. With the migration to Gitlab however all repositories will become browsable through it, meaning it no longer makes sense to offer two browsers that provide the exact same information (with Gitlab having greater capabilities). I'd therefore like to shut both of these down once Code Hosting has transitioned to Gitlab. In the category of no longer in use, we have the compatibility generator for the kde_projects.xml file. This was introduced when we shutdown Redmine/Chiliproject and migrated to Phabricator, as a way of keeping services that needed to discover a list of KDE Projects functional. As we've since migrated to using YAML files within the sysadmin/repo-metadata repository for both the CI System and kdesrc-build (and with LXR using kdesrc-build to do it's code checkouts) there shouldn't to my knowledge be anything still relying on this (aside from perhaps scripty). I'd therefore like to shut this generator down as well, along with the compaibility redirector running at projects.kde.org (given that it has been some time since we were using that site, and many projects have moved around in the virtual structure since then, making the redirects it is able to offer useless) Any comments regarding the above? Cheers, Ben
Sysadmin Load Reduction: Project Specific Sites
Hi all, In terms of project specific sites, we are in a reasonably good state here, with most sites being based off either a standard CMS or static site generator (which are relatively easy to maintain in bulk with the incremental effort being much lower). There are some exceptions though, and in the case where the service no longer appears to be in use, or the project in question now inactive, it makes more sense for us to render the sites into either static copies, or to discontinue the service. I'd therefore like to propose that the following websites be converted into static copies: - Commit Digest (commit-digest.org): The last time this was updated was back in 2014, with the most recent issue there being nearly 5 years old. - RKWard (rkward.kde.org): This site is currently based on Mediawiki, which is substantially more difficult to maintain and keep updated compared to a site built using Hugo, Jekyll, Wordpress or Drupal. Given that the site was last updated back in early 2018, i'd like to make this static, and should updates need to be made in the future the content can then be converted at that time into something more easy to maintain. - Simon (simon.kde.org): While this site is based on Drupal, the project itself hasn't seen a release now since 2013, more than 5 years ago. Given that this seems to be unlikely to change soon, it makes more sense at this stage to remove even the incremental cost of maintaining it's Drupal instance, and convert it to a static site. - Marble (marble.kde.org): Whilst this site is for the most part a minimally dynamic site, it has a component to it which essentially replicates Planet, just having Marble only postings. This necessitates custom logic on the server side, which is something no other site (including www.kde.org) has. I'd therefore like to eliminate this logic (leaving the rest of the site as it is) - Vvave Stream (vvave-stream.kde.org): This site was originally created as an "online platform for the Babe music player" (which was subsequently renamed to Vvave). Based on server logs however it appears to be essentially unused, and given that it is Python based (which is one of the more maintenance intensive forms of hosting we provide) i'd like to shut this down. Any comments regarding the above? Cheers, Ben
Sysadmin Load Reduction: Communication Services
Hi all, In the category of Communication Services, we currently run a couple of things which appear to be of limited use now to the broader community. The items i'd like to remove here are: - KDETalk.net Jabber Server: This was subject to registration abuse sometime back, and due to a lack of anti-spam measures within Jabber servers in general, we were forced to disable public registration on this service. Given that the community in general leans to preferring Email, IRC, Telegram and Matrix (in no particular order) for it's communications, it does not appear to make sense for us to continue to operate this. - 'insanity' and 'Amarok' IRC Bots: These are hosted on behalf of the Amarok project. It would appear that some time back the 'Amarok' bot crashed, and given that we've yet to receive a report regarding this, it appears that the bot is no longer in use. Given that Amarok has yet to make a KF5 based release and activity is very minimal, i'd like to shutdown and archive both bots in this instance. Regards, Ben
Reducing the load on Sysadmin
Hi all, One of the things that was prepared as a result of the Sysadmin BoF at Akademy was a list of systems and services which we look after and provide to the community. Whilst individually all of the services seem fairly reasonable and maintainable, the cumulative number of them has created a situation where they limit our ability to reasonably maintain our services as a collective whole. I've therefore conducted an analysis of all the various services we operate, with the objective of shutting down those services and sites that either provide marginal benefit to the community, are historical in nature or which could be provided better by others. Please note that while individually each item may seem small (and therefore "not an issue" to continue running), it is the collective number of them that create the problem. I'll shortly be sending out a series of emails regarding the services in question which have been identified for shutdown. Cheers, Ben
Re: Call for Mentors and Project Ideas for Season of KDE 2020
It's so great to see Caio stepping up to lead Season of KDE for the first time. Please everyone support him and help us onboard new contributors! Valorie On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 6:06 AM Caio Jordão Carvalho wrote: > Hello, everyone! > > After a one-year hiatus since the last edition of Season of KDE in 2018, > we have started to make plans for the next edition! > > But before announcing the program, we need to have a significant number of > mentors and interesting projects. Now we have an Ideas Page ( > https://community.kde.org/SoK/Ideas/2020) where mentors can list their > projects. Remember that SoK is more general than GSoC, so these ideas are > not limited only to coding tasks and you can include projects related to > documentation, artwork, translation, reports and other types of work as > well as code. > > Now we have this timeline schedule and the announcement post is going to > be published soon, so we need to include the ideas on the page now. > > The timeline is: > > 2nd December 2019 - 3th January 2020: Participant and Mentor Application > period > > 6th January 2020: Projects announced > > 8th January 2020, 00:00 UTC: SoK work period begins > > 17th February 2020, 23:59 UTC: End of work > > 21th February 2020: Results announced > > 28th February 2020: Certificates issued > > Beginning of Q3 2020: Merchandise and Swag sent out by courier > > > That's all for now, folks! > > Best, > Caio > > -- > Caio Jordão de Lima Carvalho > - http://carvalho.site >
Trip report: Qt World Summit 2019
Hi, this week Kai Uwe, Roman and I represented KDE at Qt World Summit in Berlin. TL;DR Went fine overall, some things can be improved. Preparation: I feel that preparation time was a bit short. Knowing who will go and what kind of booth to expect earlier would have taken off some organizing pressure. We expected some generic promotion material (e.g. flyers) to be available, but the material found on the promo wiki [0] was outdated. We hope that we can improve this in the future [1]. Another thing that can be improved is getting demo hardware for the booth. Instead of relying on the attendants having suitable hardware at home or knowing people who do a public register of people that have and are willing to lend out demo-suitable hardware could help the process a lot. We ordered a bunch of flyers (designed by Andy), stickers with the KDE logo and Konqi, and KDE beer coasters (desgined by Carl) as well as KDE Polo Shirts for the three of us. We have quite some leftovers, a process to reuse them for the next event instead of reprinting them would save costs and would be good for the environment. Booth: Our booth was on the first floor (or second, for the folks that don't start their floors at 0). It was a bit special since all the corporate booths were on the 0th floor and we were the only booth on our floor, but it was a deliberate decision to show that we are different than the corporate folks and we did get enough people passing by on their way to the talk rooms. Having 2-3 people more at the booth would help both from an organizing point of view and it would allow us to attend more talks and show presence at the other booths. We did not have any talks about KDE stuff this year. We should look into that into having more in the future. Hardware-wise we had: - A KDE Slimbook (courtesey of Slimbook) - A Pinebook (from Kai) - A One Mix 2S 2-in-1 convertible (Kai). Very interesting device, but needs some work to be really usable - A Nexus 5X running Plasma Mobile (from me) - A Librem 5 developer kit running Plasma Mobile on postmarketOS (from Jonah Brüchert). Unfortunately part of the touchscreen wasn't working so demonstrating the full capabilities was hard. - A Samsung Galaxy S6 running Android (courtesey of KDAB) - A TV screen running a slideshow (rented from the organizers). The slideshow could use some love and more up-to-date screenshots. - A Kirogi-compatible drone (from Eike). Unfortunatley we had some software issues so we couldn't really show it off We also planned to show the PinePhone developer prototype, alas it didn't ship in time. People: Since it was my first World Summit I don't have any reference to the previous years. From what I've heard general attendance seems to have gone down a little compared to last year, but the quality of the event has gone up. I feel like interest in KDE was decent and and we've had a bunch of interesting conversations. A lot of people were interested in Plasma Mobile and the 2-in-1 convertible, not so much in the laptops we were showing. To me this indicates that we should try to grow more into this direction, especially in the area between desktop and phone (think tablets and convertibles). In the future it would be nice to have flyers with a give-away message for our mobile offerings. Frameworks is interesting for the attendees but kinda hard to promote since you can't really demo it. When I got the chance to talk about Frameworks people were interested, with Kirigami being the one we talked about most. However, many people indicated that LGPL is not a feasible option for them, but I'm not sure they understood the dos and don'ts of the LGPL correctly. Maybe having a list of 'success stories' from external Frameworks users can help. Cheers Nico [0] https://community.kde.org/Promo/Material [1] https://phabricator.kde.org/T11867
