Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Monthly notable accomplishments

This page lists notable accomplishments for the month as we come up with them during our weekly team meetings.

January

 * New release of Java Gearman plugin
 * Gerrit upgrade! (3.3.6 → 3.3.9)
 * Ahmon debugging of contint1001
 * mwcli coolest tool honorable mention
 * Production benchmarks of yaml parsing for MW
 * New test environment progress for GitLab
 * Plan for trusted runners coming together
 * Scap prep auto working in beta (on the way to prod)
 * Gerrit 3.3→3.4 prework to solve javascript incompat
 * CI-agents upgrade prep for stretch -> bullseye
 * MWCLI progress and GoLand for IntelliJ

February

 * logspam-watch is fast now because Ahmon is good at computers and can tolerate modifying Perl
 * Wrapping up MediaWiki settings loader expedition caching—abstractions for MediaWiki config settings—they can declare how they're cached and how long (with probablistic early expiry to help with lock contention)
 * Mukunda has freed himself from train :D
 * Jaime joined, already has a scap patchset
 * Things we didn't do but benefit from: New GitLab test instance in devtools project: https://gitlab.devtools.wmcloud.org/ --> same puppet as prod!
 * Tyler's DigitalOcean exploration spike
 * Scap prep auto! is neat <3
 * Antoine's qemu learnings!
 * moving train-dev to helm3

December

 * Greg now director of FR tech!😅
 * Performance scap improvements (beta-scap-sync-world takes less time than ever)
 * Scap backtrace much cleaner (fewer of them for common error situations)
 * Several small Phabricator improvements including:
 * improvements to in-progress status for workboards
 * anti-vandalism feature to prevent merging more than 5 tasks in a single transaction.
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T298063
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T288956
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T295934
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297249
 * Test wiki that has NO LocalSettings.php — just uses yaml
 * Pipelinelib for helm3
 * Scap backport validation

November

 * Deploy MediaWiki manually in Train-Dev to k8s!
 * Pipeline supports copying files out of containers as published artifacts in Jenkins!
 * Deployed Tuesday with a script thing!
 * Scap 4.0.3 release!
 * record time for scap release
 * Worked?!l out a path forward for GitLab runner architecture with SRE; moved projects to top-level group with runners: https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos \o/


 * https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/thcipriani/bacon-stats#-bacon-window-stats
 * Data³ dashboard new stuff!

October

 * Scap 4 release!! Now with more Python
 * GitLab upgrades
 * Gerrit added to train-dev unblocks scap backport dev
 * Data^3d is functional and ready for demos
 * More people using train dev
 * Antoine uses chrome^Hium |not sure that is a win|
 * Gerrit upgrade to 3.3.6 (fixes some minor ui glitches)
 * Client side errors are blocking the train
 * GitLab is open to all
 * dashboards getting close to demo-worthy?  http://173.17.185.55:8001/-/dashboards/project-metrics?project=PHID-PROJ-uier7rukzszoewbhj7ja

September

 * Upgraded GitLab to 14.x release
 * Migrated dev-images repo to GitLab
 * GitLab usernames fixed
 * Productive collaboration with an upstream https://github.com/rclement/datasette-dashboards/issues/9
 * Successfully set up gitlab ci on ddd: https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/releng/ddd/-/pipelines/665

August

 * Started dev-images to buster
 * Gerrit 3.3
 * Successful php_fpm_always_restart: true test (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T266055)
 * GitLab soft launch
 * migrated mw-cli to gitlab, got docker-in-docker integration tests working (thanks addshore)
 * https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/releng/cli/-/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml
 * Finished dev-images to buster
 * Merged workboard metrics code!
 * Reviewed on GitLab
 * GitLab code review experience ftw
 * A successful (?) interaction with GitLab upstream
 * GitLab upstream merge request in progress
 * Node 14 patch updated
 * Emacs installed on releasesXXXX servers
 * Mukunda learned how to extend datasette with ddd/phab functionality

July

 * Projects exist on GitLab
 * Gerrit upgrade pairing
 * Published local dev cli

April

 * Scap 3.17.1 tagged
 * GitLab Ansible code review
 * Deployment trainings

May

 * Quibble 0.0.47
 * Jenkins upgrade to latest LTS
 * Released new upstream Jenkins Gearman plugin
 * Wikitech Gerrit docs updated
 * data³ used successfully to extract train blocker stats from Phabricator
 * Added transaction metadata to Phabricator task transactions api so that tools can get more detailed transaction details required for the train blockers analysis.
 * Quibble weekly meetings
 * gitlab.wikimedia.org is running (still needs cas registration)
 * Documented the process for adding languages to phabricator, as well as maintaining the translation strings from translatewiki. All of this is now documented in the README for the phabricator translation repo. That change can be seen here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/rPHTR0de9c13ef996326a99d6320f4c26669901f3aff4

June

 * Knowledge transfer on Gerrit deployments
 * Running gitlab.wikimedia.org, real use now
 * Guiseppe reports: curl -H 'Host: en.wikipedia.org' https://staging.svc.eqiad.wmnet:4444/wiki/Main_Page works
 * Automatic notification of security patch application failures.  One real use so far.

January

 * Update dev images to split apache and php containers for local dev
 * Gerrit security bug discovery and deployed fix by Antoine
 * In sync with Gerrit upstream war (Java compiled code)
 * Target releases for apt packages in blubber deployed so wuvi can use npm

February

 * PipelineLib fully working on releases-jenkins.wikimedia.org
 * Rust introduction talk (not strictly RelEng business)
 * logspam-watch
 * Minimum hits consolidation feature
 * Error histograms, at-a-glance status indicators (emoji, it's emoji), improved UTF-8 handling and terminal resizing
 * Gearman plugin deployed. Merged bunch of pending changes + a fork from GoodData company which adds support for Pipeline jobs

March

 * PipelineLib fully working on releases-jenkins.wikimedia.org
 * Credentials added to pipelinelib
 * S&F contractors underway with production GitLab configuration
 * Terrible script for finding status of production errors on logstash dashboard
 * Ability to deploy phatality updates
 * scap apply-patches much improved

October

 * GitLab consultation

November

 * Gerrit security upgrade
 * Gerrit grafana dashboard
 * Created pipelinelib-experimental cloud project for working on pipelinelib
 * Scap 3.16.0 release (tagged, waiting on SRE now)
 * logspam-watch improvements
 * apparently scap apply-patches may possibly work in some circumstances
 * Upstream fix for shallow cloning in git: https://github.com/git/git/commit/fb3d1a083f776f02caa514cad8b232d8b974641f

December

 * Scap 3.16.0 released and deployed
 * Dropped scap plugins from mw-config
 * unconditional restart on deploy for opcache corruption deployed
 * https://doc-stage.wmcloud.org/, staging area for doc.wikimedia.org. Next prod then update related docs.
 * Scap source formatted with Black now
 * Runnable runbook blog

July

 * CI now supports REL1_35 branches (and ignores REL1_33).
 * Eliminate elasticsearch dependency from Phabricator search engine
 * Cassandra Docker image
 * Jenkins node Docker image cleanup & re-onlining after disk space recovers
 * Collection of disk space stats on Jenkins workers
 * Credentials and environment variables in PipelineLib
 * Blubber now correctly supports multi-stage artifact copies

August

 * Reduced the number of non-failure FAILURE messages in CI
 * After 9 months, Aphlict is finally back.
 * Scap version 3.15.0 released (in git, if not as .deb yet)

September

 * Scap 3.15.0 was deployed to all servers
 * We have trained another person to conduct the train
 * New phabricator metrics / stats in the project reports (currently deployed to cloud, prod coming soon)
 * image promotion in CI
 * Blog post about this: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/208/ci_now_updates_your_deployment-charts/
 * Tiny incremental improvements to logspam-watch (it now shows seconds)
 * GitLab consultation well underway
 * Released Quibble 0.0.45 https://doc.wikimedia.org/quibble/changelog.html
 * Local development mailing list and updates page

April

 * Docker images published on buster-based contint2001 (as part of general temporary switch-over from contint1001 to 2001 for buster migration)
 * Composer is now authenticated with github
 * Dropped basic PHP 7.1 testing from CI
 * Published Kubernetes migration tutorial
 * Phabricator milestone columns can now be moved on workboards
 * Phabricator workboards can be sorted by most recent activity.
 * Tech talk on PGP basics
 * "Cache of wmf-config/InitialiseSettings often 1 step behind" fixed! -

May

 * The release train branch cut is now an automatic job
 * Wikimedia Portals build and WDQS data release jobs moved to docker
 * The Continuous Integration instances on WMCS have been fully migrated off Jessie! T236576
 * Scap 1.14.0 released (by releng) and deployed (by serviceops)
 * Documentation for setting up a local dev environment for Phabricator: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Local_Dev_Environment
 * CI server (contint) migrated to buster!

June

 * Scap plugins will move from mediawiki-config to scap git repository with the next release.
 * Deployment script added to deployment-charts for deploying to k8s
 * MediaWiki branch cuts are fully automated, at last!!!!
 * TMH job runner works in MediaWiki-Docker
 * Interactive logspam-watch
 * Gerrit 3.2.2

February

 * Production releases of Parsoid/PHP now also go through final pre-production tests
 * Scap release 1.13.0
 * Local development MediaWiki docker environment has shipped and been announced - https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-February/093109.html / https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Docker

March

 * scap has its first integration test
 * MediaWiki tarball / Wikimedia production are now PHP 7.4-compatible.
 * All extension and skin repos are now being tested against PHP 7.4.
 * Analytics Refinery release job isolated into a Docker container.

December

 * PHP 7.4 testing was available in CI the first "business day" after 7.4.0 was released.
 * Revived "This week in logspam" email
 * Auto DBLists
 * PGP Key repo
 * Production config now has pre-merge diff reports, e.g.: https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/job/operations-mw-config-php72-composer-diffConfig-docker/86/console

November

 * branch.py for cutting the branch for train
 * logspam-watch for tailing logfiles

October

 * Dev images are now automatically created as part of postmerge via the pipeline for:
 * Parsoid
 * Soon: RestBASE
 * (different from RESTbase? ;-))
 * Selenium documentation updated https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Selenium/Node.js
 * Quibble 0.0.36 released https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-October/092658.html
 * Quibble 0.0.37 released https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-October/092660.html
 * Quibble 0.0.38 & 0.0.39 released for mediawiki/tools/api-testing
 * Introducing Phatality - Streamlined error reporting from Kibana to Phabricator https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/177/introducing_phatality/
 * HHVM removed from CI and MediaWiki.
 * Gerrit is on gerrit1001 now
 * … and so is most of the code review. ;-) :)
 * Unforked Jenkins Job Builder

September

 * Scap 3.12.1-1 released/deployed
 * Refactored Zuul layout to use per-branch pipelines
 * Lets you run arbitrary code against a working MediaWiki install
 * The phabricator "Report Error Code" form (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/46/ ) has been updated with separate fields for the stack trace and error code/request id.
 * T232608 Delete selenium-daily-beta-EXTENSION Jenkins jobs that are broken more than 30 days
 * Write cached config to JSON as well as serialised PHP https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/533592/ (first step towards a saner config)
 * MediaWiki PHP support target modernised from 7.0+ to 7.2+ for 1.34 onwards. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228342
 * Quibble 0.0.35 release
 * 1.34.0-wmf.24 branch cut was done /mostly/ with branch.py instead of make-wmf-branch.php (some small bugs remain to work out but it's very close)
 * Creating accounts was broken on beta cluster since 2019-09-08. It was fixed today (2019-09-25). https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T232796
 * Phatality extension for Kibana deployed to production and used for reporting production errors into Phabricator.
 * Train blocker tasks created for 1.35.0-wmf.1—1.35.0-wmf.25
 * Dev images are now automatically created as part of postmerge via the pipeline for MediaWiki

August

 * Read only "gerrit-replica" active, handling 10% of all traffic (read from phab)
 * https://time.releng.team ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 * Scap 3.12.0-1 in production

July

 * Migrated all generic CI jobs from PHP 7.0 to PHP 7.2 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T225457
 * Three new folks have been spun up on and have successfully run the Train, by end-of-month
 * it-phabricator plugin updated; fixes errors in All-Users repo in Gerrit
 * Completed first book club iteration: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Book_club/Continuous_Delivery
 * Unit vs Integration test split announcement: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/169/changes_and_improvements_to_phpunit_testing_in_mediawiki/
 * Gerrit 2.15.14 deployed
 * Contint1001 now storing docker images on separate partition
 * Blubber 0.8.0 deployed - https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-July/092344.html
 * Deployment Pipeline docs published on Wikitech - https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployment_pipeline

June

 * Speculative CI meta-architecture published within WMF for feedback (two versions)
 * Old image versions automatically removed from jenkins agents when /var/lib/docker space > 80%
 * scap 3.10.0 cut
 * Jenkins build timings reports: https://people.wikimedia.org/~dduvall/jenkins/
 * Helped Kask team sketch an outline of its architecture (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Kask)
 * Fatal Monitor with marker lines for deployments: https://logstash.wikimedia.org/app/kibana#/dashboard/77cc3e90-aa27-11e7-9109-51bd3197f7a9?_g=

May

 * Repository-hosted CI/CD pipeline configurations now supported (.pipeline/config.yaml) - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T210267
 * Train notes published on branch cut
 * Codehealth pipeline beta - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/live/1/post/160/introducing_the_codehealth_pipeline_beta/
 * Some baseline local development images published

April

 * Phabricator vandalism rollback tool completed 🎉 (blog post? 😉)
 * Upgrade Zuul to 2.5.1-wmf6 (which unblocks the Gerrit upgrade to 2.16) - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T208426
 * Team offsite in Chicago

March

 * CI tooling future WG started, blogged
 * GerritBot comments on patches going through the pipeline (with fancy badges and the like)
 * Train deploy notes are now automatically generated on branch push
 * Scap 3.9.2-1 released in production
 * Phabricator upgrade: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/147/projects_forms_and_subtypes_oh_my/
 * Published the ISOSTWG results and recommendation on officewiki and announced: https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_Support_for_Open_Source_Tools_Working_Group
 * swat tags now show up in the deployment schedule (via lua magic)
 * Blog post: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/152/help_my_ci_job_fails_with_exit_status_-11/
 * CI future WG report: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/CI_Futures_WG/Report
 * Blog post: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/155/quibble_hibernated_it_is_time_to_flourish/
 * Published a CLI tool to roll back vandalism in phabricator.

Feb

 * blubber uses blubberoid.wikimedia.org in the pipeline and pipeline is almost there for end-to-end functionality (can't yet deploy to production, but nearly can)
 * scap development back on gerrit -- new contributors
 * local-charts repo created
 * docker SIG announced/setup
 * Developer satisfaction survey results https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Satisfaction
 * Scap 3.9.0-1 released in production
 * Deployed wmf.18
 * Updated Phabricator to 2019-02-20 release, blog posted detailing some changes:  https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/145/phab_phebruary/