Release Meeting: 09 Jan 2017

(07:57:04 AM) gac410: Hi all
(07:57:53 AM) uebera||: Hi, George/all!
(07:57:53 AM) cdot  entered the room.
(08:00:13 AM) ***cdot has a conflicting meeting, but will leave IRC open and comment if appropriate.
(08:00:22 AM) gac410: Thanks CDot
(08:00:23 AM) MichaelDaum: hi guys
(08:00:46 AM) gac410: Happy New Year everyone.   Hope all had a nice holidays
(08:01:59 AM) MichaelDaum: thanks thanks
(08:02:13 AM) gac410: Everyone ready to start?     
(08:03:09 AM) MichaelDaum: let's do it
(08:03:19 AM) gac410: I didn't create an agenda topic yet,    But foollowing our usual agenda - Urgent task reviews
(08:03:35 AM) JulianLevens_ entered the room.
(08:03:48 AM) gac410: In https://foswiki.org/Tasks/PatchReleaseBlocker    There is nothing new there.  Everything is quite old.  
(08:04:29 AM) JulianLevens left the room (quit: Quit: Bye).
(08:06:02 AM) gac410: on IRC yesterday jesuisse  reported an issue with the query info.author ... it returns cUID instead of a useable wikiname or username.   He was trying to fix it in his openid mapper.
(08:07:15 AM) gac410: Not sure if there is anything urgent there.  I supposes it's been that way forever - and is documented (in Meta.pm comments)   that author returns the cUID
(08:07:36 AM) gac410: But it seems like we should also have a way to get the mapped wikiname or loginname out of that.  :(
(08:08:31 AM) MichaelDaum: doesnt %USERINFO accept cuids as well?
(08:08:52 AM) gac410: I think so.   I suggested he use that to map it in the results.
(08:10:08 AM) gac410: So if that works I guess it can't be urgent.   And an enhancement for 2.2 miht be to add wikiname wikiusername,  ... tokens - consistent with the createwikiname createwikiusername ... tokens
(08:11:01 AM) cdot: i thin kit already has them#
(08:11:51 AM) gac410: hm   Okay.   I'll investigate later.   I didn't find them in the documentation.   :(   
(08:11:55 AM) MichaelDaum: yea it can't be that urgent
(08:12:20 AM) MichaelDaum: if there is a real bug - which I doubt - we can have it in a later release, please.
(08:12:38 AM) gac410: Okay  well nothing has popped up then that we should address in a 2.1.3 Beta 2.     It's been running on f.o since Dec 23rd  and been quite stable.
(08:12:52 AM) MichaelDaum: this is good news
(08:12:53 AM) gac410: i did fix a few more minor issues since - but mostly documentation.
(08:13:21 AM) gac410: And tweaks to the pending registration report after seeing it live.
(08:13:41 AM) MichaelDaum: so only thing missing for the release is a blog
(08:14:06 AM) gac410: Y.    Enough time has gone on that maybe we should do Beta 2 and blog about that.  
(08:14:49 AM) gac410: I'd love to get some bootstrap testing done on Beta 1 ... the files are out on github,  and linked from the Download/FoswikiRelease02x01x03_Beta1 topic
(08:14:51 AM) MichaelDaum: I've done an xml export mid 2015 once which I converted to foswiki then using BlogPlugin. the remaining hand full of postings following after I grabbed from web archive. this is how it looks like now: https://demo.michaeldaumconsulting.com/bin/view/FoswikiBlog/WebHome
(08:15:07 AM) gac410: Make that https://foswiki.org/Download/FoswikiRelease02x01x03-Beta1
(08:15:55 AM) gac410: So is that essentially the old Blog web?   
(08:16:11 AM) MichaelDaum: no. it is the xml export of wordpress.
(08:16:16 AM) MichaelDaum: converted to foswiki
(08:18:41 AM) ***gac410 is confused.   The engine behind the page is Foswiki ... does it have the blogging capabilities of the wordpress implementation ...   whatever features that made us jump from blog web to wordpress?
(08:19:47 AM) MichaelDaum: see https://foswiki.org/Community/OurBlogTalk
(08:20:05 AM) MichaelDaum: this is a 10y old discussion
(08:20:46 AM) gac410: I know that.   I am not quesioning any philosophy.   just trying to understand what moving the XML to foswiki accomplishes.    
(08:21:00 AM) MichaelDaum: all I say: here you are, another option to get back control over our blog content. the content we had in wordpress and went offline a couple of weeks ago.
(08:21:13 AM) gac410: ie is it a "snapshot" for now that we will eventually put back in wp?
(08:21:44 AM) MichaelDaum: we have got the xml export from 2015
(08:22:07 AM) MichaelDaum: with it we can do two things: (1) import into a new wordpress (2) convert it to foswiki
(08:22:11 AM) MichaelDaum: I did (2)
(08:23:18 AM) gac410: I believe uebera|| has the new domain name ready to go,   didn't mention wordpress
(08:23:23 AM) MichaelDaum: in addition I reconstructed the remaining content not part of the 2015 xml export by copy&pasting stuff from https://web.archive.org/web/20161206203300/http://blog.foswiki.org/
(08:24:28 AM) gac410: okay.    uebera||:   Whats the state on moving this to the f.o server.    Do you have time to spin up a wordpress,  or do we go with the XML import into a foswiki web?
(08:25:41 AM) uebera||: Well... I can install a new WP, but we definitely would need to fiddle with the configuration (Until now, I only have a WP installation as an ongoing POC for my own purposes elsewhere). Regarding "marketing", using our own dogfood is a plus (as said above, this has been discussed before). From technical point of view, w/o WP, there is no need to deal with PHP (although one can protect this by means of, e.g., ModSecurity).
(08:26:18 AM) uebera||: The question would be: What will we effectively lose (given we manage to map all old URLs to new ones) if we discard WP now?
(08:26:59 AM) gac410: It spins right back to the  https://foswiki.org/Community/OurBlogTalk discussion I guess.    Nothing has changed on Foswiki IIRC 
(08:28:28 AM) gac410: MichaelDaum:   With this extended downtime,  does anyone "follow" our blog,  and what's the benefit of delaying 2.1.3 emails / announcements  for the blog repairs.
(08:29:23 AM) JulianLevens_: I'd prefer that we eat our own dog food, but I really don't know enough about blog platforms and what makes a good one
(08:29:27 AM) MichaelDaum: the blog is our central publishing platform for news all around foswiki. all social platforms point back to it. thats how we multiply the message.
(08:29:58 AM) MichaelDaum: the only other outlet is rss feeds by foswiki.org
(08:30:10 AM) gac410: Unless there is a really strong benefit, I'd lean towards buiding 2.1.3 Beta 2,  and doing the traditional email  announcements and for now point everyone at the Download page.
(08:30:26 AM) gac410: And try to fix the blog before 2.1.3 final.
(08:31:16 AM) JulianLevens_: +1
(08:31:17 AM) gac410: It *is* a beta,  not a general release.   So we really need to reach the die-hard folks who are willing to test.
(08:31:18 AM) MichaelDaum: from an admin perspective the tasks are: either install a wordpress, or install a separate foswiki instance including the extra plugins 
(08:31:34 AM) MichaelDaum: and then move in the content
(08:31:40 AM) uebera||: At the moment, once propagation of the new DNS entry finishes, we have a single maintenance message on blog.foswiki.org -- we can add a single line to announce 2.1.3b2 there as well.
(08:32:15 AM) uebera||: "While waiting for the blog, why not evaluate Foswiki 2.1.3b2?"
(08:32:23 AM) MichaelDaum: +1
(08:33:02 AM) gac410: Y.   And we *really* need people on nginx, bsd, .. .and behind proxies ... to test the bootstrap.   Thats were a number of changes happened. 
(08:34:02 AM) gac410: plain vanilla apache bootstrap seems to work fine,  and I've given nginx a quick test.    but we need more real-world feedback here.    I think vrurg tested bsd for me.
(08:35:13 AM) JulianLevens_: Why do we need a separate FW instance for our blog rather than a Blog Web and extra plugins?
(08:35:50 AM) gac410: Okay.   Based on the +1   ...   I'll start working on a 2.1.3 B2,  along with an email.   I'll probably start with  the text that is on our Download page,  or on the github release download page.
(08:36:24 AM) gac410: If anyone can in the next day or so give the bootstrap stuff a test.    hm ....  Rather than Beta 2   should I jump right to Release Candidate?
(08:36:41 AM) gac410: Nah... .Beta 2.    We have not really had any testing.
(08:36:57 AM) uebera||: JulianLevens_: Michael told me the blog uses some yet unpublished pieces of code.
(08:37:25 AM) JulianLevens_: Ok, I see
(08:38:36 AM) MichaelDaum: I sensed that we'd better keep foswiki.org itself as close to the released software as possible
(08:39:29 AM) MichaelDaum: implementing the blog requries some extra plugins that clearly exceed this constraint
(08:39:39 AM) gac410: MichaelDaum:  Does it need NatSkin?       I do prefer that foswiki.org  is as close to an "out of box" experience as possible.  
(08:39:48 AM) MichaelDaum: no
(08:40:09 AM) gac410: Extra plugins,    That's not as big a deal.   That ship sailed a long time ago ;D
(08:40:28 AM) MichaelDaum: however there might be some fixes required for PatternSkin
(08:40:55 AM) gac410: I suppose we can enable/disable them per web if we need to.     I think that's a feature ... just never remember how  ;)
(08:41:08 AM) uebera||: (FYI--the above POC I mentioned can be found here: https://blog.themenzentrisch.de (configuring/cleansing WP is not easy, especially if you don't want it to show version numbers in links everywhere))
(08:41:53 AM) gac410: pattern skin fixes -  Should we have them in 2.1.3 Beta?   
(08:43:24 AM) MichaelDaum: these fixes are only required within BlogPlugin, DisqusPlugin and MetaCommentPlugin
(08:43:55 AM) MichaelDaum: atm PatternSkin doesn't display comments yet. and a few things more that nat does but pattern not
(08:46:53 AM) gac410: Can we isolate any of this to a single web?    It would certainly be simpler to just add it to foswiki.org  
(08:48:00 AM) gac410: A web specific skin=   setting   and web specific enable/disable of plugins?
(08:48:45 AM) MichaelDaum: I'll compile a list of plugins required to run the blog
(08:49:59 AM) uebera||: a "web specific enable/disable of plugins" option would be nice for the f.o sandbox. Does that work already?
(08:50:27 AM) gac410: I vaguely recall a way to do that .   need to dig into the docs.
(08:51:14 AM) gac410: Note on #foswiki channel,  discussions of the 2.2 features - namely cdot's  changes to expand template variables on demand.
(08:51:51 AM) gac410: So lets table the blog for now. ... we all have some actions  ;)   and talk a bit about the 2.2 release efforts.
(08:52:23 AM) gac410: MichaelDaum has the biggest backlog of committed features.   I have a few.   cdot has some that are mostly complete sitting in item branches 
(08:52:35 AM) gac410: and JulianLevens_ has a big one.   Backlinks  :(
(08:53:37 AM) gac410: Last year we left it as a feature freeze in April  and targeting 2.2 for May or June.   ....    How does that work for everyone with features in the backlog  
(08:54:16 AM) JulianLevens_: Right now that's ok
(08:55:19 AM) gac410: Once we get 2.1.3 out,  I think we need to shift our 2017 gears and start the train rolling to 2.2.    Attach your boxcars or be left on the sidings!    :D
(08:58:11 AM) gac410: So   MichaelDaum ...   2.2  target for april?    Lots of features in the backlog:   https://foswiki.org/Development/ReleasePlan
(08:58:17 AM) MichaelDaum: we need to get rolling during 2017. 
(08:58:42 AM) MichaelDaum: the biggest one is TopicTitle
(08:58:50 AM) MichaelDaum: as it adds a new api 
(08:58:55 AM) MichaelDaum: to func
(08:59:21 AM) MichaelDaum: we might also need a TopicTitlePlugin for engines < 2.2
(08:59:23 AM) gac410: cdot - think you can refresh your pending features?   There were some last minute changes to the TMPL:  vs using EXPAND:  
(09:00:17 AM) MichaelDaum: there are a couple of plugins that already do TopicTitles. these need to shift to a new official api.
(09:00:31 AM) gac410: is the API "accepted"  as a feature?    Just a matter of adding the Func:  call?
(09:00:38 AM) MichaelDaum: the other planned items in my backlog a rather small
(09:00:56 AM) MichaelDaum: Foswiki::Func::getTopicTitle($web, $topic);
(09:01:07 AM) MichaelDaum: seems straight forward
(09:01:28 AM) MichaelDaum: as well as a TOPICTITLE macro
(09:02:04 AM) gac410: I woudl not have a problem with retrofitting it into post-2.1.3 ...   if we really need to.      The Blog requires it doesn't it?
(09:02:11 AM) MichaelDaum: docu, tests, changes to natedit, jump thru some burning loops, ...
(09:02:19 AM) MichaelDaum: no
(09:02:48 AM) MichaelDaum: let us keep patche releases for patches, not for features.
(09:02:53 AM) gac410: Agreed.   
(09:03:31 AM) gac410: Okay  so TopicTitlePlugin is a retrofit of some pieces ...   monkey patching too?
(09:03:32 AM) MichaelDaum: we will also have a change the way WikiWords are rendered: they display the TopicTitle then.
(09:04:03 AM) gac410: yikes ... so indeed this is pretty big.   2.2. for sure.   Is it already in our feature backlog?
(09:04:13 AM) MichaelDaum: extra care looking at common plugins such as ControlledWikiWordsPlugin and the like 
(09:04:29 AM) MichaelDaum: https://foswiki.org/Development/TopicDisplayName
(09:04:43 AM) gac410: You beat me... I was just about to paste my copy   :D
(09:04:56 AM) MichaelDaum: you still can 
(09:05:03 AM) gac410: https://foswiki.org/Development/TopicDisplayName
(09:05:06 AM) gac410: :P
(09:05:09 AM) MichaelDaum: :D
(09:05:55 AM) MichaelDaum: If we create a TopicTitlePlugin then yes, it will monkey patch Foswiki::Func
(09:06:06 AM) gac410: Okay ...  so one more difficult question.      Any ideas on how to drum up some developers to tackle our bit-rot in the Extensions
(09:06:55 AM) gac410: Maybe some pointed emails?   A banner "ad" on f.o?    ...
(09:07:17 AM) MichaelDaum: not the best way to attrackt new developers: "please fix our bitrot"
(09:08:09 AM) uebera||: "Become part of the great 2016 Foswiki Spring Cleaning!"
(09:08:21 AM) gac410: Well I was not going to say it exactly that way  :D.     We set ourselves up for this by porting  all the T* extensions without really enlisting the original authors   But... they are all just as rotten over there too.
(09:08:24 AM) MichaelDaum: what we can do is put up some kind of "job descriptions"
(09:09:10 AM) gac410: How about a new Extension status  "Up for adoption"    with a banner that displays if the extension is in need of a developer?
(09:09:12 AM) MichaelDaum: "You are a sass ace? Then ..."
(09:09:46 AM) MichaelDaum: new developers want a piece of meat they can chew on by themselves 
(09:09:49 AM) gac410: sorry - I lost something in the translation on that one ... sass ace?
(09:10:10 AM) uebera||: "Polish your CV. Get involved w/ Open Source"
(09:10:20 AM) MichaelDaum: gac410, we were planning to adopt sass: http://sass-lang.com/
(09:10:25 AM) gac410: Ah...  okay
(09:10:27 AM) MichaelDaum: for skin development and easy configurability
(09:10:42 AM) MichaelDaum: uebera||, yea
(09:11:13 AM) MichaelDaum: cpan foswiki is another area of its own that new perl devs might be interested in
(09:11:50 AM) MichaelDaum: debian packages
(09:11:56 AM) gac410: We really need to be careful about stuff that would cause major restructuring.   Vrurg's 3.0 is Huuuge   and does need to be whipped into shape.
(09:12:22 AM) MichaelDaum: yes indeed. his work has potential to attackt more devs.
(09:13:07 AM) gac410: I would be strongly against OS packages *unless*  they are something that any of us can build using simple tools.    Being dependent on the private tools of a single developer is a really bad situation
(09:13:30 AM) MichaelDaum: absolutely
(09:13:39 AM) gac410: rpm, bsd, deb, windows msi,  etc.  are all a disaster IMHO
(09:13:39 AM) MichaelDaum: we are still suffering from this situation atm
(09:13:53 AM) gac410: And a bit of an embarassment
(09:14:24 AM) uebera||: vagrant, docker (+ anvil)?
(09:14:26 AM) MichaelDaum: adding debian support to BuildPlugin
(09:14:42 AM) MichaelDaum: and have a debian/ subdir per extension
(09:15:18 AM) gac410: So for a job discription.     We need someone willing to build the tools needed to make packaging a part of our release process.   as opposed as someone to run off and build pkgs for us.
(09:15:39 AM) gac410: s/build/update our exisiting tools/ 
(09:16:17 AM) MichaelDaum: Sven's solution had a lot of guessing in it: stuff that extensions authors should actually maintain themselves in a debina/rules file
(09:16:37 AM) gac410: JulianLevens_ is working on vagrant and has a procedure that works well last I heard
(09:17:36 AM) gac410: It's hard to have devs maintain distro specific rules - if the dev doesn't know/run that distro     I'd be lost setting rpm rules 
(09:17:53 AM) MichaelDaum: we actually have to worlds that we need to bring together: perl and cpan and javascript and nodejs
(09:18:13 AM) MichaelDaum: nodejs comes with build tools of its own quite capable actually
(09:18:32 AM) vrurg entered the room.
(09:18:48 AM) gac410: howdy vrurg
(09:19:46 AM) gac410: MichaelDaum:   I think most of us are at saturation on what we want to tackle ...   No idea how the project would wrap itself around packaging / cpan / nodejs / etc.
(09:20:38 AM) MichaelDaum: I know, gac410. the idea is to list them as kind of "job descriptions" for new foswiki devs. 
(09:20:42 AM) MichaelDaum: in a more visible way
(09:20:59 AM) gac410: okay good.   
(09:21:46 AM) vrurg: Hi!
(09:22:20 AM) vrurg: I guess I missed the meeting today.
(09:23:12 AM) gac410: I suggest we start a "Community/HelpWantedTalk" page   and try to wordsmith it a bit with what we are looking for and areas for focus
(09:23:43 AM) gac410: To target on some consistent "marketing" of the project needs -  maybe to go out with our 2.1.3 beta / release announcements.
(09:25:22 AM) gac410: I wonder if in our 2.1.3 announcemeten we also should include a small  "Future plans" section.     "Foswiki community is working toward the following Features planned for 2.2," and link to the proposals.
(09:25:43 AM) gac410: Make it clear that we *have* a forward looking path.
(09:26:51 AM) gac410: howdy vrurg .. .yeah    8am rolls around way too early for us US east coast types.     I still need breakfast
(09:28:11 AM) gac410: So   Developers:    Does anyone have any "committed features"  Listed on https://foswiki.org/Development/ReleasePlan     That they would not want "committed" for our upcomign 2.2. release. 
(09:28:29 AM) gac410: Otherwise I think a "look ahead" is a good move for each release.
(09:29:32 AM) MichaelDaum: gac410, I don't think this is a good idea: hiding such an important message together with the 2.1.3 release announcement. this one should have a bold "UPGRADE NOW" across the the screen. nothing else. no btw what we also wanna to say is blablabla.
(09:30:59 AM) gac410: I'm modeling this after what I used to get from IBM in their software release announcements.  They always used to tell you what was "over the horizon"   
(09:31:17 AM) gac410: And sends an important message that the project is not dead.  
(09:31:58 AM) gac410: Not a lot of space.  Just a paragraph saying hey we are alive and have plans for the future
(09:32:12 AM) MichaelDaum: of course. but there is no need to say it twice ... in the same announcement ... thats a waste of opportunities.
(09:33:23 AM) MichaelDaum: attracting new devs is too important to make it a footnote: this needs to be a campaign.
(09:34:22 AM) gac410: Oh...   separate topics.    1)  Attracting new devs.   A campaign.       2)  We have work underway for shiny new features     
(09:34:58 AM) MichaelDaum: ah okay. good to clarify we talked about different topics.
(09:36:15 AM) gac410: So for each release.      "What we are releasing, and a peek toward where we are going"        And an orthogonal campaign to encourage new developers.   "Fork us on github"   - but be sure to push back"   etc.
(09:37:04 AM) MichaelDaum: yea that sort of thing.
(09:37:13 AM) gac410: Translations is another area for non-developers to join in.
(09:39:10 AM) gac410: We are definitely seeing interest in foswiki.    For each new registration on f.o,   and there are at least a few every week -  I check the logs for activity,  to see if they are an SEO link placement or real interest.
(09:39:38 AM) gac410: And I'm seeing quite a few that look through support, the docs,  and end up on the Download page.   
(09:40:36 AM) gac410: So vrurg   How's 3.0 ?
(09:41:44 AM) vrurg: Not much to say. I'm on new config specs development now. Takes a lot of time.
(09:43:14 AM) vrurg: Guess it'll take another two-three weeks to complete. Then I'll need cdot support to rewrite the configure code to work with the new specs data format.
(09:45:09 AM) gac410: Okay ... so any other business?     T+1:43      let me summarize:
(09:50:06 AM) gac410:  - Work on Beta 2 ... we'll make that our public beta
(09:50:06 AM) gac410:  - Blog moves to foswiki.org using Michael's XML extract.    Look to selective enable plugins on f.o.   If unable may need separate instance.
(09:50:33 AM) gac410:  - start a Community/HelpWantedTalk    Plan for a campaign to enlist developers
(09:51:17 AM) gac410:  - We need some Beta 1 testing especially revised bootstrap code
(09:51:50 AM) gac410:  - Foswiki 2.2 still on track for an April feature freeze.   
(09:56:14 AM) gac410:  - And we really need to enlist someone to help with our packaging issues  (deb, rpm, pkg, etc.)
(09:57:22 AM) gac410:  - And if you have a "committed" feature in our 2.2 ReleasePlan,  expect to see more visibility - in "Coming Attractions" 
(09:57:46 AM) gac410: Anyone else ... Going ... Going ...
(09:58:04 AM) JulianLevens_: Thanks gac410 for this summary and your sterling work in general
(09:58:26 AM) JulianLevens_: Thanks and happy new year to everyone else
(09:59:13 AM) gac410: Thanks everyone ..  2017 should be a productive year for Foswiki.      Happy New Year!      Now... get to work!   :D
(10:01:01 AM) uebera||: Enjoy your breakfast... ;)
(10:01:59 AM) gac410: Oh..  uebera|| MichaelDaum  ... for plugins,  there is a DISABLEDPLUGINS   setting that we can set in SitePreferences,  and then override in the Blog web.
(10:02:21 AM) gac410: So if it works, that should let us selectively enable plugins for the blog. 
(10:02:51 AM) gac410: And if it doesn't work ... we have a task for 2.1.3 Beta 2  ;)