Developers of Sympa

[David VERDIN <address@concealed>]

Hi Soji,

Woaw, tempers are rising! ;-)

I'm not sure you read my mail carefully. Answers below.

----- Original Message -----
From: "IKEDA Soji" <address@concealed>
To: "David VERDIN" <address@concealed>
Cc: "sympa-developpers" <address@concealed>
Sent: Sunday, 30 September, 2018 15:28:46
Subject: Re: [sympa-developpers] speaking about versioning

>Let me talk in short (I don’t want to prevent others from stating their 
>opinion).
>
>  * I will do continue my “refactoring” work (I have been reporting on my 
> work twice or so by year. See these posts for details).  I believe they are 
> necessary for us to make steps to the new major release, Sympa 7.

Yes, I agree. That's the aim of my proposal. I was talking to all developers 
and hence asking their advice. I think I have tours. What about others?

>  * As a release manager
>
>(yes I am. Do you remember?),

Yes I know that and don't question that! I said exactly that in my mail! Read 
me!

>
> I will keep executing periodical stable releases by each 90 degrees of 
> ecliptic longitude (I described this at first, and you would know).  I 
> believe this custom is good at delivering bug fixes to users as fast as we 
> can.
>  Honestly, at beginning, I didn’t expect releases by full seasons: I 
> thought twice by year.  But due to many bug fixes releases by seasons 
> became casual.
>
>And, I will state following:
>
>I don’t want to hear shallow idealism talking like “we SHOULD do this”, “you 
>SHOULD do that” or so.  If you were so idol to talk about, you could do the 
>real work.

It is not idealism. It is a proposal. Therefore I use conditional. And 
remember that I already did work towards this direction.


>We have always released beta before each stable.  The time of releases were 
>and, even now, are predictable.  For you, it was and it is easy to make plan 
>of tests.
>
>To release each beta and stable, I do reject empty theory like “keep the 
>feature”.  We are not slaves of waterfall model.

Well, depend on who is "We". "We", the developers? Indeed. But "we", the 
users, will not always agree. If the features exists, it is for a good reason 
and people use it.

Cheers,

David


— Soji


2018/09/30 21:20、David VERDIN <address@concealed>のメール:

> It's that ime of the year when I'm thinking. Don't want it wasted, so I'll 
> share my thoughts with you.
> 
> First: we're bickering about version numbers and web site whereas we should 
> be focusing in doing the same work as Soji: develop Sympa.
> Second: Marc and I made a first, if small, step towards Sympa 7 by writing 
> a test file on Bulk.pm. It is incomplete of course as the main challenge in 
> Sympa is to make a module testable by taking into account the numerous 
> dependencies inherited from 20 years of evolution.
> Third: Before summer, I started to write test files on Conf.pm and 
> SympaDatabaseManager.pm, which were incomplete too but achieved the same 
> goal: make these files testable. I had some very productive discussions 
> with Soji and Racke at the time, which helped making it work smoothly in 
> Sympa.
> Last: Soji is the guy in charge of Sympa 6.2, we all agreed on it. Though 
> it does not mean we can't discuss his choinces (I had a few says on the 
> 6.2.34) it means that, as long as we are not productive, it is up to him to 
> decide how and when to release. As far as I followed, he always took time 
> to create pre-releases and to plan ahead release dates. And the few times 
> when real problems arose, he accepted to delay release dates until the 
> problem was fixed. All in all, he kept Sympa alive while taking community 
> advice into account.
> 
> All of this makes me think about the way to Sympa 7, as Soji wrote.
> 
> 1- The Sympa code will need a deep refactoring, what Soji already started 
> in Sympa 6.2 (just look at the Spindle directory for example) and I 
> understand he plans to continue this work, when needed.
> 2- The only way to prevent regression is to have a testable code.
> 
> So I think that we should put our efforts towards implementing a full test 
> framework in the current Sympa 6.2. In addition to making this branch more 
> reliable (that's the pint of tests after all) it would have the benefit to 
> force us to understand fully the current code base. I know the Sympa code 
> base very well but there are also a lot of recent parts that I need to dig 
> in.
> 
> So here could be the plan: cover the whole Sympa 6.2 code base in unit 
> tests, without changing the code. Then only, we could work on Sympa 7, a 
> work that would be eased by the understanding bornt from our work on tests.
> 
> Of course, some parts of the code we'll test will probably disappear 
> replaced by third party modules. But I don't think our time would be 
> wasted, because we would know exactly what we need to achieve with these 
> modules.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "IKEDA Soji" <address@concealed>
> To: "sympa-developpers" <address@concealed>
> Sent: Saturday, 29 September, 2018 08:33:46
> Subject: Re: [sympa-developpers] speaking about versioning
> 
> Marc,
> 
> Yesterday you told you plan to report what caused by defect with
> 6.2.34 in a university.
> 
> My answer is already given: "Who are you saying that?".
> 
> 6.2.34 was preceded by two beta pre-releases.  "The lack of beta
> cycle"?  Ha!  The fact is that you have never joined any tests.
> Don't pass the buck.
> 
> Criticizers may tell anything they want to tell, only if they were
> not or they forgot they are insiders. --- No, Marc, you look exactly
> an uninvolved bystander.
> 
> # Honestly, I have realized some defects of 6.2.34 early in the next
> # day of its release.  But, if it would fuel empty sermon as he
> # wrote, it is vain to propose release of fix.  Furthermore, they might
> # not affect features my users (my company and customsers) were using
> # at that time. ;-/
> 
> 
> In some days I'll write about things I haven't written much: Funding,
> relation with the other organizations especially RENATER, the way of
> development, path to Sympa 7 etc. It may contain some unpleasant
> things for some readers.  I apologyze in advance.
> 
> Though in my mind, I'd not like to waste time by such bubbling...
> 
> 
> Regards,
> -- Soji
> 
> On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 07:45:36 +0200
> "Stefan Hornburg (Racke)" <address@concealed> wrote:
> 
>>> On 9/26/18 10:37 AM, Marc Chantreux wrote:
>>> hello,
>>> 
>>> semantic versioning for sympa7 was acted during the
>>> hackathon but what about the 6.* ?
>>> 
>>> * some of us just can't trust the current so called
>>>  stable release because of the lack of beta cycle.
>>>  stability is very important for very large
>>>  organizations using sympa. Soji does a great job
>>>  providing assistance on github but obviously, he
>>>  can't catch every flaws so we need a real beta cycle
>>>  time.
>>> * also those very large organizations cannot afford
>>>  a very to update to every new stable release
>>>  (damn true when instability and regressions are in
>>>  the corner) so i still think we we need to slow
>>>  down the release cycle.
>>> * on the other side, maybe some little sites can
>>>  handle the release pace of 6.2
>>> * the lack of beta cycle is a problem
>>> 
>>> i was thinking about a way to improve the situation
>>> with the current release cycle. that's my proposal:
>>> 
>>> * Soji moves from 6.2 to 6.3, releasing the pace that
>>>  sounds good for him.
>>> * Whenever something is know up and running fine
>>>  by large sites who want to contribute to beta test
>>>  (universalistes for sure but we can ask for friends
>>>  to jump in...  framalist, unistra, ...), we pick that
>>>  version to become a 6.4.something.
>>> * whenever there is a breaking change, we can increment
>>>  the minor.
>>> 
>>> i see avantages:
>>> 
>>> * semantic versionning for sympa6 (so newcomers are not
>>>  confused about to )
>>> * let Soji run the pace he wants but trying to avoid
>>>  the problems he can't handle by his own.
>>> 
>>> regards,
>>> marc
>> 
>> My two cents:
>> 
>> * Soji does do beta releases
>> * There is no point in changing the release cycle until we got really beta 
>> testing
>> 
>> Also the very large organisations certainly can support Sympa in terms of 
>> funding, manpower, testing changes etc ...
>> 
>> Regards
>>        Racke
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ecommerce and Linux consulting + Perl and web application programming.
>> Debian and Sympa administration. Provisioning with Ansible.
> 
> 
> -- 
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