Engineering Community Team/Meetings/2012-10-18

ECT 2012-10-18 Attending: Sumana, Guillaume, Chris, Andre, RobLa

List of projects

 * Testing infrastructure/automation
 * Automated tests
 * Beta Labs
 * Feature testing efforts
 * 20% time wrangling
 * 1.21 deployment
 * Bug triage
 * Bugzilla application management
 * Monthly report
 * Communications support
 * Technical communications
 * Recruiting/hiring
 * Hackathons/events (future)
 * Conferences in general
 * Gerrit project owner groups
 * Recruitment/encouragement
 * GSoC
 * Dev community metrics

Who's doing what (this week)
Chris: Feature testing, Browser automated tests,  focus on Beta labs, creating QA processes with Michelle and Zeljko. Guillaume: technical communications (formerly "ambassadors"), incorporation process, communications support Sumana: 20% time replacement proposal, Grace Hopper followup, Bangalore prep, volunteer encouragement, rampup for incoming ECT people, bug triage Andre: Bugzilla app management, bug triage, ramp up Michelle: automated tests, beta labs Željko: browser automated tests, conference prep, other automated tests. Conferences.

Feature testing efforts
More work with NPF/Curation now that it is running in beta labs. Moving /mnt/upload6 to /mnt/upload7 uncovered a number of issues now documented in BZ, prevented creating new accounts.

Automated tests
Browser: More discussion about the architecture of the First Official Browser Test with Željko based on Rob's suggestion of 3rd party client. Implemented a basic test suite using Cloudbees (3rd party offers Jenkins+Saucelabs as an inexpensive service until we have gerrit<->Jenking functioning.) qa/ and qa/browsertests projects exist in gerrit Also working on a Mobile regression suite to be automated. Filipin running browser based tests from Jenkins. Filipin: creating regression test suite for wmf deployments, initial concentration on ContentHandler issues. Also Chris: automated tests for wmf deploy target on test2wiki - no timeline yet, need to talk with Filipin, especially one that understands downloading PDFs & books - nearly in place Other automated testing: Michelle working closely with Mobile team, drafting regression test suite, beginning automation

Beta labs
Outstanding requests to support Mobile FrontEnd, E3, etc. in beta labs, will be exploring that with Antoine. Lack of test environment(s) is becoming more important. Progress is encouraging, but the more we try to use beta labs the more fiddly issues we uncover. This is expected, but still not very pleasant. Michelle: identifying test envs (beta labs BZ tickets, plus reviving mobile-testing host, "mobile testing" - was broken)

20% time wrangling
Sumana needs to write proposal - this week

1.21 deployment
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap Andre to concentrate on finding recent bugs that sprang out of deployments Chris supporting this via his team making more automated testing Working with Zeljko on a short automated suite to be run vs. test2wiki pre-deploy. (short explanation re test & test2. What's on test.wikipedia.org - minutes away from being deployed to the cluster, & it's served differently. Not a good test environment.  We should rename it "staging" or the like. Serves MW straight out of NFS. so you don't have to scap (push the files, distribute them), so you can do instant, last-minute sanity checks.  NOT a good testing environment.   test2 is just another wiki on the cluster.  That's what we should push people towards.   "test2.wikipedia.org" is the one you should go to.)

Bug triage
Andre's starting on this https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:AKlapper/WildIdeas Catching up, discussing things in SF

Bugzilla application management
also see https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:AKlapper/WildIdeas Andre wants to clean up bug management documents FIRST If you have bugzilla metrics you want to include in the monthly report, please let Guillaume know.

There are some requests & extensions re improving the weekly report. So that's a broader thing to discuss re the community metrics. So, no suggestions for Guillaume yet

Communications support
Guillaume reviewing blog posts etc. Andre to consider writing a blog post about bug reporting. Maybe in Nov.

Monthly report
Next week is monthly report week, consider adding your status updates now: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2012/October

Technical communications
Guillaume continues to collect & organize ideas, and plan the next steps. Early draft at https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom/Collaboration ; cleaning up and updating https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications input welcome, more specifically on the "Vision" and the "How to get there" sections. Bold edits are fine, talk page comments are great.

You'll see communication on the mailing lists next week.

Recruiting/hiring
new VEC start delayed till November :( Please tell your friends/social networks about http://jobs.wikimedia.org/ Chris - continuing to discuss WMF, features, tools, environments, etc. with Michelle Grover (new Mobile QA Engineer)  (made the curriculum last week with Željko Fillipin), and demoing beta labs in the process. New curriculum: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/QA/first_week - Chris has a request or 2 from rest of the eng org on this We posted the job description for the release manager. Business plan consultant Seeking someone to complement Sam Reed - do more communications, and move to a more frequent deployment schedule.  Eventually, continuous code delivery.  Engineers commit code, it gets deployed, and it's their responsibility to watch the cluster in consequence - way easier to find regressions, & more satisfying.

Hackathons/events (Bangalore & the future)
Not really involved in Bangalore planning for November anymore - Tomasz & Alolita are doing that Sumana needs to publicize Amsterdam event

Conferences in general
Sumana: Grace Hopper followup http://systers.org/systers-dev/doku.php/ghc12osdwikimedia Filipin: preparing for CITCON Budapest conference Oct. 19 and Amsterdam Wikipedia hackathon with Antoine and Timo Nov 9 (hack on Jenkins, Gerrit, beta cluster, etc.)
 * Sumana to write blog post
 * Chris to lead writing some objectives for the event

Gerrit project owner groups
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Gerrit_project_ownership Sumana managing

Recruitment/encouragement
Sumana reaching out Sumana working on maintainership document, CoC (long run)

GSoC
Now GSoC 2012 is in maintenance mode In November, will start trying to get more future students interested, do more retrospective on what's worth it/what to do next time Andre to consider trying to get into Google Code-In

Dev community metrics
Quim volunteering on this; see analytics post http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2012-October/000176.html Guillaume will need to know if this is ready/stable/accurate enough to be included in the October report.

Misc
Sumana: SF in Oct 17-28 Andre: SF in Oct 17-27 Guillaume: Probable semi-vacations in November (i.e. a few days a week spread out on a few weeks; should minimize disruption); will follow up on incorporation process later today following meeting with accountant Chris: vacation Nov 9  Fundraiser may start early Nov Željko: Citcon Budapest Friday October 19th (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference)