2024-02-14 - Officially Supported Technologies

Ankita Sen is next, followed by Jakub Skoczen - Jenn Colt will take notes since they're both absent.

Reminder:  Please copy/paste the Zoom chat into the notes.  If you miss it, this is saved along with the meeting recording, but having it here has benefits. 

Goal:  Move the Ramsons OST page from DRAFT → ACCEPTED.  Our (self-imposed) deadline for this is 16 Feb 2024 

• Review comments
• Review/discuss the policies attributed to each section
• Add/remove/change versions as needed (focus on 3rd party dependencies)

Notes:

• Front end - policy asks for versions but right now we don't list them. We might list one or more versions, probably one (most cases will just support one version at a time but policy allows wiggle room if needed)
• Might want to defer policy discussion in favor of settling on Ramsons requirements
  • Keep policy information for next release but remove for Ramsons
  • Stay with standards for previous releases
• Frontend hasn't had versions previously so holding off on that for now
• Node and Yarn - Node needs to get upgrade because of EOL concern, no plan for Yarn yet
• First party -  skip until later in cycle
• Shared - stay the same
• During build automation testing- TBD, Craig McNally will talk to John Coburn and others
• Post build testing - our Cypress version is old, people would like to upgrade to something beyond 10, these tools aren't as relevant for system operators, held in one repo so less coordination. Craig McNally will circle back with Zak Burke
• Languages - Think Java is safe at 17 for now. Groovy not changing, open api not changing
• Build tools -
• First party - out of scope for today
• Third party - Dependent on the support periods, suggest using latest available instead of specifying versions? Some disagreement about not specifying. Need to discuss the policy for these further because our first party tools are coupled to these third party tools. For Ramsons since not working on policy piece yet, extrapolating that there will be a 3.3 in time for Ramsons.
  • Hard to predict some of this without knowing release schedule. Spring boot periods support periods don't conveniently work with FOLIO so doing the best we can
  • Spring framework - good with 6.1
  • Grails - 6, k-int migrating now, will let TC know if it's an issue per Owen Stephens in a previous meeting
  • vertx - fine with 4, supported for 2 years after 5 comes out (not out yet)
  • Lombok - doesn't need to be consistent across modules
  • AWS SDK - needs to be 2 because 1 is reaching end of support
• Build automation testing
  • uncontroversial for JUnit 5, rest assured is not cross cutting, testcontainers rely on version of docker but we aren't versioning docker so it's better not to try and version
  • these areas a bit frozen right now due to resourcing
• Post Build Integration Testing
  • haven't specified versions in the past, all in one repo, so whatever version in that repo
• Infrastructure
  • Postgresql 16 and only 16 is correct
  • Open Search 2 is what's available, ES 8 good at least until 9 is out, which it isn't. Maintenance periods may end up not coinciding well with FOLIO releases. Leave alone for now.
  • Kafka/MSK- Kafka should be a supported version of 3? haven't specified in the past, not ready to specify today, again schedule doesn't work well with FOLIO's
  • S3/MinIO - same
    • Will work on for Sunflower
• Work on policy portions on Wednesdays so we get it done in time for Sunflower. WIP - Policies and Reasoning
• Defer approving until Monday to give Craig McNally time to talk to Stripes team

Previous Notes:

• A workflow for these pages. When do they transition from one state to another. Do we even need statuses at all ?
• Stripes architecture group has some questions about the Poppy release.
• Zak: A handshake between developers, dev ops and the TC. Who makes that decision and how do we pass along that knowledge ? E.g. changes in Nodes and in the UI boxes. How to communicate this ? We have a large number of teams, all have to be aware of it.  TC should be alerted that changes are happening. We have a couple of dedicated channels for that. Most dev ops have subscribed to these channels. How can dev ops folk raise issues to the next level of community awareness ? There hasn't been a specific piece of TC to move that along.
• Craig: There is a fourth group, "Capacity Planning" or "Release Planning". Slack is the de facto communication channel.  There are no objections to using Slack. An example is the Java 17 RFC. 
• Craig: The TC gets it on the agenda and we will discuss it. The TC gets the final say.
• Marc Johnson: We shouldn’t use the DevOps Channel. The dev ops folks have made it clear that it should only be used for support requests made to them.
• Jakub: Our responsibility is to avoid piling up technical debt.
• Marc: Some set of people have to actually make the call. Who lowers the chequered flag ?
• Craig: It needs to ultimately come to the TC at least for awareness. There is a missing piece. Capacity Planning needs to provide input here. 
• Marc: Stakeholders / Capacity Planning could make that decision. Who makes the decision ? Is it the government or is it some parts of the body ?
• Marc: the developers community, the dev ops community and sys ops are involved. For example the Spring Framework discussion or the Java 17 discussion. But it was completely separate to the TC decision. It is a coordination and communication effort.
• Marc: Maybe the TC needs to let go that they are the decision makers so that they be a moderating group.
• Jakub: I agree with Marc. But we are not a system operating group. Dependency management should be in the responsibility of Release management. There are structures in the project for that.
• Jason Root: I agree with Jakub and with Marc also. Policies should drive operational/release/support aspects of Folio.
• Jason Root: If the idea of “support” is that frameworks are supported, then of course the project should meet that.
• Marc Johnson
  Some group needs to inform OleksAii when a relevant policy event occurs.
  These documents effectively ARE the manifestation of the policy.
• Craig: This is a topic for the next Monday session.

• Craig to see if Oleksii Petrenko could join us to discuss the process for updating the officially supported technologies lists.

• Do common libraries used to build in approved frameworks need to be on this list? Such as spring-way and spring-module-core.

Possible topic/activity for a Wednesday session:

• Discuss/brainstorm:
  • Ideas for the type of developer-facing documentation we think would be most helpful for new developers
  • How we might bring existing documentation up to date and ensure it's consistent 
  • etc.