Mailing list threading improvements

[Christofer Dutz]

TL;DR: We’re updating how auto-generated email from Github will be
threaded on your mailing lists. If you want to keep the old defaults,
details are below.

We’re pleased to let you know that we’re tweaking the way that auto-
generated email from Github will appear on your mailing lists. This
will lead to more human-readable subject lines, and the ability of most
modern mail clients to correctly thread discussions originating on
Github.

Background: Many project mailing lists receive email auto-generated by
Github. The way that the subject lines are crafted leads to messages
from the same topic not being threaded together by most mail clients.
We’re fixing that.

The way that these messages are threaded is defined by a file -
.asf.yml - in your git repositories. We’re changing the way that it
will work by default if you don’t choose settings. If you’re happy for
us to make this change, don’t do anything - the change will happen on
October the 1st 2023.

Details of the current default, as well as the proposed changes, are on
the following page, along with instructions on how to keep your current
settings, if you prefer:

https://community.apache.org/contributors/mailing-lists.html#configuring-the-subject-lines-of-the-emails-being-sent

Please copy d...@community.apache.org
on any feedback.

Chris, on behalf of the Comdev PMC

Last boarding call for ApacheCon NA/EU and Asia .... CFP closes in a week ...

[Christofer Dutz]

Hi folks,

I am writing to your project list as there have been submissions from your 
project to the IoT track in the past, we have integration modules for your 
project in PLC4X, you are listed as "IoT" category project, or I just thought 
your project would be a good match for an IoT related talk ;-)

I have just checked and there haven't been submissions for the IoT Tracks on 
your project to (both or any of) the ApacheCon CFPs ... the CFP is closing 
soon, and we will not accept any talks after the deadline is passed (It was 
open long enough and I sent enough reminders to most of you)

CFP ApacheCon NA/EU: https://www.apachecon.com/acah2021/cfp.html (Closing 
Monday, May 3rd, 2021 8:00 AM (UTC))
CFP ApacheCon Asia: https://apachecon.com/acasia2021/cfp.html (Closing Monday, 
May 3rd, 2021 8:00 AM (Beijing time - UTC +8))

Looking forward to some high-quality sumbissions.

Chris

[PLC4X] [Kafka Connect] Help with Kafka Connect configuration?

[Christofer Dutz]

Hi,

we are currently working on improving the PLC4X Kafka Connect plugin.
While the current version offered a pretty simple configuration, this is not 
quite suitable for production scenarios.

In contrast to normal Kafka Connect sources/sinks the PLC4X source and sink 
should distribute the load that a connection to an industrial controller is 
only initiated by one Kafka connect node at a time
(The reason for this is, that industrial controllers are only able to accept a 
very limited number of connections)
So the Kafka Connect system should distribute these sources to it’s nodes.

For each source we also are able to run multiple jobs which collect given sets 
of parameters in individual intervals and push the data to individual Kafka 
topics.

We came up with the following configuration:

name=plc-source-test
connector.class=org.apache.plc4x.kafka.Plc4xSourceConnector

defaults.topic=some/default

sources.machineA.connectionString=s7://1.2.3.4/1/1
sources.machineA.jobReferences.s7-dashboard.enabled=true
sources.machineA.jobReferences.s7-heartbeat.enabled=true
sources.machineA.jobReferences.s7-heartbeat.topic=heartbeat

sources.machineB.connectionString=s7://10.20.30.40/1/1
sources.machineB.topic=heartbeat
sources.machineB.jobReferences.s7-heartbeat.enabled=true

sources.machineC.connectionString=ads://1.2.3.4.5.6
sources.machineC.topic=heartbeat
sources.machineC.jobReferences.ads-heartbeat.enabled=true

jobs.s7-dashboard.interval=500
jobs.s7-dashboard.fields.inputPreasure=%DB.DB1.4:INT
jobs.s7-dashboard.fields.outputPreasure=%Q1:BYT
jobs.s7-dashboard.fields.temperature=%I3:INT

jobs.s7-heartbeat.interval=1000
jobs.s7-heartbeat.fields.active=%I0.2:BOOL

jobs.ads-heartbeat.interval=1000
jobs.ads-heartbeat.fields.active=Main.running

So we define the individual sources which map to PLC connections and each 
connection references a set of jobs.
“Source” and “Job” are PLC4X terms, so if they collide with Kafka Connect 
terms, please don’t be confused.

We are able to successfully process this into a working configuration.
The problem is, that we would like to certify the driver and therefore are 
required to use the ConfigDef objects to describe the configuration structure.
What would be the best way to do this? Or is our approach completely wrong? As 
far as I can see it, I can only configure my Kafka Connect plugins via property 
structures (Even if they’re transferred via JAVA in the distributed mode)

We would greatly appreciate some help here.

Chris

Anyone interested in helping out a little brother Apache project with their Kafka integration?

[Christofer Dutz]

Hi all,

I am one of the Apache PLC4X (incubating) committers and am looking for people 
willing to help out with a little thing.

PLC4X is aiming at industrial programmable logic controllers. So what we are 
doing is similar what JDBC did in the late 90s.

We’ve implemented a universal API with which we can write software to access 
industrial PLCs in a unified way.
In contrast to OPC-UA we do not require any changes on the devices as we 
implement the drivers for the individual protocols as main part of the PLC4X 
project.

We hope that this will help us use all our cool Apache software for building 
the next generation of Industry 4.0 solutions,
as currently it’s a real problem to communicate with these little gray boxes 
directly.

We not only work hard on the API and the matching drivers, but also on 
integration modules to easily use PLC4X in other frameworks.
We already have full Apache Camel and Apache Edgent support.

Even if we do have examples for reading and writing data from and to Kafka, we 
would really like to provide a Kafka-Connect adapter.
This would make it super easy to communicate with industrial controllers from 
inside the Kafka ecosystem.

I have already implemented a stub of a Kafka Connect plugin with Source and 
Sink partially implemented.
So this stub has all the code for reading and writing via PLC4X but I am not 
quite that deep into Kafka that I think I should finish this
implementation without professional support of the people actually knowing what 
they are doing on the Kafka side.

So is anyone here able and willing to help with this Kafka Connect Plugin for 
PLC4X?

Looking forward to positive responses ;-)

Chris