2023-11-06 Meeting notes

Owned by Craig McNally
Last updated: Nov 08, 2023 by Ankita Sen
6 min read

Date

Attendees 

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
1 minScribeAll

Ankita Sen is next, followed by Jakub Skoczen 

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.

1 minTCR Board Review

All

Nothing new

5-10 minLiaison Updates

Maccabee Levine Tod Olson  Jakub Skoczen  Craig McNally 

  • CC: Maccabee Levine - No meeting this week
  • PC: Tod Olson - 
    • Presentation and discussion of current UAT practices and issues. There are sometimes practical issues of providing adequate test data. Some POs able to involve SME in UAT before BugFest. Trying to cultivate ongoing discussion about QA.
  • RMS Group: Jakub Skoczen - Not Present
  • Security Team: Craig McNally - EBSCO has started using PRISMA for vulnerability scanning and the found security issues have been noted and hidden. The critical and high security issues are in priority and decision regarding whether these issues willbe embargoed is still being decided upon.
5 min

Technical Council Sub Groups Updates

All

Quick updates only.  If we can't find volunteers for groups, we'll need to add the topic to our backlog and address it during dedicated discussion sessions.

Distributed vs Centralized Configuration - Florian Gleixner - no new updates, RFC is in progress

Architecture Subgroup - Jenn Colt  - Tri council meeting 1PM on Wednesday(08.11.2023). Craig McNally - this subgroup is not going anywhere for now so it's better to close it now and reopen it when we have something more conclusive.

Communicating Breaking Changes - Ankita Sen - No updates, no more volunteers, will pass on the participation message in a few other slack channels, if no response comes we can decide whether to have the group with just Zak Burke and I or push it and have a dedicated discussion on it.

Translation Subgroup - 

TCR Process Improvements - 

1 minDecision LogAll

Nothing new

10-20 minRFCs

All

RFC Process Improvements:

  • /wiki/spaces/~cmcnally/pages/3834098
    • Those that attended refined this a bit and think it's ready to put into action.  We lacked a quorum, so we deferred making a formal decision until today (e.g. via lazy consensus or vote)

Notes:

1 minUpcoming MeetingsAll
  • - Folio Chairs meeting
  • - Maccabee Levine - Want to finish off with the Officially supported technologies
5-10 min

Officially Supported Technologies

All

Standing agenda item to review/discuss any requested or required changes to officially supported technology lists

Today:

I already updated the Officially Supported Technologies page for Quesnelia. There were some notes which I took over from Poppy and I updated the support period (based on information taken from the Releases section and the #releases channel).
  • ...
Time PermittingDev Documentation VisibilityAll

Previous Notes:

Marc Johnson raised a point regarding the maintenance of the dev.folio.org website. He mentioned that in the early days of Folio, this website was managed by a small group of individuals who were working on the project. However, with the project's growth, keeping the site up to date has become a challenge. Marc suggested that the community should collectively decide whether to continue maintaining the website or explore alternative platforms for sharing development information, as there are differing preferences regarding resources such as the wiki. He also observed that the dev.folio.org site is not updated frequently due to the effort involved.

  • RFCs are not searchable from the wiki or dev site.  
  • DRs help, but may not be applicable or enough in some cases.
    Craig McNally proposed the use of Decision Records in the RFC process, emphasizing their role in formalizing decisions and creating a wiki presence, especially for handling breaking changes. Maccabee Levine  supported this.
  • ...

Craig McNally and Marc Johnson  discussed the need for a central reference and documentation hub for Folio developers. Marc raised this topic, which had also been mentioned in the "Things Folio Can Do Better" discussion. He proposed creating a developer index on the wiki to guide developers, despite the potential complexity of the task. Craig supported the idea, highlighting the challenges of finding information and improvements in GitHub search. Concluded with plans to revisit the topic in future discussions.

Today:

  • Skipped today given <10 minutes.
NAZoom Chat


Topic Backlog

Decision Log ReviewAll

Review decisions which are in progress.  Can any of them be accepted?  rejected?

Translation SubgroupAllSince we're having trouble finding volunteers for a subgroup, maybe we can make progress during a dedicated discussion session?
Communicating Breaking ChangesAllSince we're having trouble finding volunteers for a subgroup, maybe we can make progress during a dedicated discussion session?
Officially Supported Technologies - UpkeepAll

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.


Dev Documentation VisibilityAll

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.

Action Items