Developers of Sympa

[Soji Ikeda <address@concealed>]

David,

2018/09/30 22:44、David VERDIN <address@concealed>のメール:

> Hi Soji,
> 
> Woaw, tempers are rising! ;-)

It’s only natural.  It’s so disgraceful that who haven’t done they had to do 
are blaming themselves.

The next stable release will be 21 December.

I in my mind I plan to release beta three times before it.  As the first beta 
will include almost only addition of a new feature, it will be a good drill.

Ciao!
— Soji

> 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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>