Wikitech-l October 2020

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

49 participants
54 discussions

by Greg Grossmeier

Hello all, I am pleased to announce that the GitLab consultation is now open. The open discussion period is set to run for 4 weeks, starting today. Please see the consultation page for all of the details regarding how the consultation will work: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab_consultation And the associated talk page where we welcome and encourage your engagement: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:GitLab_consultation Thank you, Greg -- | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | Dir. Engineering Productivity A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |

3 years, 6 months

Platform Engineering Offsite

by Naïké Nembetwa Nzali

Hi all, >From Monday, October 26th to Thursday, October 29th, the Platform Engineering team will hold its virtual offsite. During this time, we'll only respond to urgent Unbreak Now! requests and resume our regular work on Friday, October 30th, starting with a backlog review. We're grateful for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Best wishes, Naïké -- *Naïké Nembetwa Nzali (she/her)* Senior Project Manager Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

3 years, 6 months

No train next week; no deployments next Tuesday

by Tyler Cipriani

Hi all There is a planned datacenter switchback next week scheduled for Tuesday, October 27th 2020[0]. To avoid creating problems for our SREs we'll be skipping the train for next week -- the week of 2020-10-26. Additionally, we want to avoid deploys for a full 24 hours following the switchover. This means no deploys next Tuesday (2020-10-27) and no deploys Wednesday (2020-10-28) until after 15:00UTC. The deployment calendar is up-to-date[1]. As we head into the holiday season, I've added a list of foreseeable train disruptions to the bottom of the Deployments Calendar[2]. Thanks! -- Tyler [0]: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/Server_switch_2020> [1]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments> [2]: < https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Upcoming_Release_Train_disr… >

3 years, 6 months

Scrum of scrums/2020-10-21

by Deb Tankersley

Hello, This email contains updates for October 21, 2020. For the HTML version, see: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Scrum_of_scrums/2020-10-21 Cheers, Deb ------------------------ *= 2020-10-21 =* == Callouts == * Release Engineering: No train next week (2020-10-26), data center switchover + offsite == Product == === iOS native app === * Updates: ** Continuing development on [[phab:tag/ios-app-bonefish-on-a-balloon/|6.7.3]] *** Article as a Living Document experiment *** Will do user testing within the next week === Structured Data === * Updates: **more on media search - improving interface, improving backend, instrumentation === Abstract Wikipedia === * Updates: **Voting in second round of [[metawiki:Abstract_Wikipedia/Wiki_of_functions_naming_contest|the community naming contest]] for what to call the central wiki of functions will begin soon. **Continuing work on using ZType data to enforce structure when editing ZObjects. === Parsing === * Updates: **Parsoid output for inline media output is going to change from <figure-inline> to <nowiki><span>. Parsing Team needs all Parsoid clients to update their code to handle either tag. if necessary. See </nowiki>[[phab:T266143|T266143]]. We would like to switch Parsoid and core output before the last train of the year rolls out. == Technology == === Engineering Productivity === ==== Release Engineering ==== * Updates: ** Train Health *** Last week: 1.36.0-wmf.13 - [[phab:T263179]] *** This week: 1.36.0-wmf.14 - [[phab:T263180]] *** Next week: No Train -- deb tankersley (she/her) sr program manager, engineering Wikimedia Foundation

3 years, 6 months

TechCom meeting 2020-10-21

by Niklas Laxström

This is the weekly TechCom board review in preparation of our meeting on Wednesday. If there are additional topics for TechCom to review, please let us know by replying to this email. However, please keep discussion about individual RFCs to the Phabricator tickets. Activity since Monday 2020-10-15 on the following boards: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom-rfc/ Committee inbox: - T239742 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T239742> Should npm packages maintained by Wikimedia be scoped or unscoped? - Still in inbox Committee board activity: - T263904 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263904> Are traits part of the stable interface? - Daniel moved to in progress (see last weeks email thread) New RFCs: (none) Phase progression: - T262946 Bump Firefox version in basic support to 3.6 or newer - P3 -> P4: ready to go on last call IRC meeting request: (none) Other RFC activity: - T119173 RFC: Discourage use of MySQL's ENUM type - Concerns about removing existing uses, but it doesn't seem necessary to remove them

3 years, 6 months

Seeking contributions for the Wikimedia Technical Blog

by Sarah R

Do you have a project or initiative you would like to write about for the Wikimedia Technical Blog <https://techblog.wikimedia.org/>? We're currently seeking contributions! The Wikimedia Technical Blog is a central place for people to share stories about the technical work that they do. Posts cover a range of topics <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_technical_blog_editorial_guideline…> from how-tos, to community outreach, to deep dives into processes and technology, and much more. If you're interested in writing a blog post, read the editorial guidelines <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_technical_blog_editorial_guidelines> to learn about what would make a good story and how to get published! We manage the process of reviewing and publishing posts here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/Technical-blog-posts Looking forward to hearing about your great work and reading your stories! Sarah R. Rodlund Senior Technical Writer, Developer Advocacy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy> srodlund(a)wikimedia.org

3 years, 6 months

Engineering Productivity Quarterly Roundup for Q1 - 20/21

by Erika Bjune

Greetings! *TL;DR* We’re doing lots of engineering productivity work this year, which is highlighted below in this new quarterly report. For Q1, highlights include: - the GitLab consultation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab_consultation> [1] is closed and results are being assessed; - Code Health Objectives are being set up with all engineering teams, nearly 20% of production code bases across three teams are covered; - A call for help with a burgeoning number of errors in production <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093833.html> [2] went out; - New resources for discussing and improving local dev environments, including an email list <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/local-dev> [3] and a wiki page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Local_Dev…> [4]; - A new Phabricator Video Tutorial Series <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series> [5] was unveiled, and; - CI now updates your deployment-charts <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/208/ci_now_updates_your_d…> [6] *Longer Version* In the annual plan for this fiscal year, there are a number of commitments to address and improve engineering productivity across our technical teams in the organization, and this Engineering Productivity Quarterly Roundup is being launched with the goal of sharing and celebrating the progress that is being made as we chip away at this essential work. As a bit of background, we made a number of commitments across our engineering organization in both Technology and Product to take action on improving the health of our code bases, educating teams on how to approach code health, and improving systems that help with streamlining the overall engineering workflow. Let’s take a look at what happened in Q1 to forward these commitments: GitLab Consultation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab_consultation> [1] During the month of September, Engineering Productivity Director Greg Grossmeier shepherded a consultation period to assess opinions on the use of GitLab as a code review system to replace Gerritt. This was launched in response to outcomes from the Developer Satisfaction Survey <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Satisfaction_Survey/2020> [7] that indicated dissatisfaction with Gerritt, especially in the volunteer community. Comments poured in about the pros and cons from both internal and external engineers, and results are being compiled now. Stay tuned for an announcement later this month on the outcome! Code Health <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_Health> [8] Objectives JR Branaa, Engineering Manager of the Quality & Test team, is leading the charge on the goal of setting Code Health Objectives (CHOs) with all engineering teams in the organization by the end of the fiscal year. The CHOs are the result of an evolution of learning and understanding wrangled by JR and the Code Health Group <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_Health_Group> [9] over the past couple of years, and in order to make tracks on what has been surfaced, a KR was created to “educate teams on and define Code Health Objectives for our production-deployed code repositories (20% in Q1, 40% in Q2, 70% in Q3, 100% in Q4) and report and iterate on them with code owners on a quarterly basis.” These CHOs will be different for every team and are mainly crafted to address areas including technical debt, test coverage, bug backlogs, documentation, and code complexity, among others. JR deserves a huge THANK YOU for his persistence in holding and driving this important body of work! Appreciation also goes out to the teams that have already been working on their CHOs with JR: Platform Engineering Team, Search Platform and Parsing, which represent nearly 20% of our production code bases. But wait, there’s more! Part of the code health initiative includes education, and you can learn about opportunities in Q2 for you to join workshops on a sign-up basis. The next one is scheduled for October 22 and will be on Test Driven Development <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Code_Health_Group/projects/DevE…> [10] with training delivered by Zbyszko Papierski from Search Platform. Call to Help with Errors in Production <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093833.html> [2] Tyler Cipriani, Engineering Manager for the Release Engineering team, put a call out asking for help to reduce the number of errors showing up in production. If you haven’t done so yet, take a look at the Phab board <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-production-error/> [11] where these errors are captured as tasks and see if there are any that your team needs to or can address. Tyler noted that the number of new tasks tagged as “Production Error” are outpacing the number of tasks closed in a given week, which is clearly not sustainable. Please give Release Engineering a hand in wrangling these! And, if you’re not quite sure where to start, and/or digging into logs is a challenge for you, check out this presentation from Timo on How to Logstash <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WzvqRNEpg9ndTq9RLHSzCH43vAOiQnUn/view> [12] for some guidance. A New Focus on an Old Problem: Local Development Environments Vagrant? Docker? Bare metal Mediawiki installs? Get involved in the evolution of local development environment improvements. Release Engineering has put a stake in the ground with a new local-dev mailing list <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/local-dev> [3] and Local Dev Updates wiki page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Local_Dev…> [4] dedicated to updating and improving our local development environments, with a particular focus on Docker. In addition to being informed through these channels, you are invited to share your thoughts and contributions regarding this critical and complex tooling. Instead of giving in to your struggles and frustrations, step up and help make it better! Thanks to Jeena Huneidi and Brennen Bearnes on the Rel Eng team for spearheading the effort, and a special shout out to Adam Shoreland for his pioneering work on Mediawiki-Docker. Phabricator Video Tutorial Series Debut <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series> [5] Have you ever wondered who this mysterious “AKlapper” subscriber on every Phabricator ticket is? Why, it’s Developer Advocate Andre Klapper, of course! Without his tireless attention to Phab and it’s constant influx of tickets, well, we would have only chaos. In addition to scanning an insane number of tickets on a daily basis, Andre also works hard to educate users on how to use the system through the Phab Help Page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help> [13] where folks can get answers to their questions <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Phabricator/Help> [14], live Q&A sessions every other Tuesday for real-time help (look on the WMF Staff Calendar for these), and now, most recently, a set of tutorial videos <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series> [15] covering the basic concepts of Phabricator. Thank you, Andre, for maintaining order and consistency and teaching us all how to follow in your giant footsteps! Bits and Bobs Other informative things you may have missed: - CI now updates your deployment-charts <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/208/ci_now_updates_your_d…> [6], a blog post by Jeena Huneidi from Release Engineering detailing “Another reason to migrate your service to the pipeline!” - Production Excellence #23: July & August 2020 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/204/production_excellence…> [16], Timo Tijof’s monthly summary of incidents, trends, and appreciations focused on striving for operational excellence. - Phabricator Monthly Statistics <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093802.html> [17], an automated email from Phab Rick Aytor detailing the month’s Phabricator stats, including accounts created, tasks created, task statuses and other interesting productivity indicators. If you would like anything added to this roundup report in the future, please send your suggestions to Erika Bjune (ebjune(a)wikimedia.org). Thank you all for your hard work and attention to improving the effectiveness of our engineering foundations! [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab_consultation [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093833.html [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/local-dev [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Local_Dev… [5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/208/ci_now_updates_your_d… [7] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Satisfaction_Survey/2020 [8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_Health [9] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_Health_Group [10] https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Code_Health_Group/projects/DevE… [11] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-production-error/ [12] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WzvqRNEpg9ndTq9RLHSzCH43vAOiQnUn/view [13] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help [14] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Phabricator/Help [15] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series [16] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/204/production_excellence… [17] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093802.html *Erika Bjune *(she/her) VP of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

3 years, 6 months

Doxygen upgraded on CI

by Antoine Musso

Hello, I have upgraded Doxygen on the CI infrastructure this morning to 1.8.19. Most repositories used 1.8.18. MediaWiki extensions were still using 1.8.16 due to a crash occurring when processing Wikibase [T254465]. Changelog is available at: https://www.doxygen.nl/manual/changelog.html#log_1_8_19 [T254465] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T254465 -- Antoine "hashar" Musso Release Engineering

3 years, 6 months

The second round of voting for mediawiki logo - one week left

by Amir Sarabadani

Hello, This is a gentle reminder that there's one week left from the voting period of choosing the next logo of mediawiki. If you haven't voted yet, you can vote in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Proposal_for_changing_logo_of_MediaW… Best -- Amir (he/him)

3 years, 6 months

TechCom meeting 2020-10-14

by Dan Andreescu

This is the weekly TechCom board review, usually in preparation for our meeting, a few days late this week because I forgot. Apologies. Activity since Monday 2020-10-06 on the following boards: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom-rfc/ Committee inbox: - T263904 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263904>: Are traits part of the stable interface? - T239742 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T239742>: "Should npm packages maintained by Wikimedia be scoped or unscoped?" - Both have been sitting in the inbox for a month or so, Tim first pointed this out a few weeks ago but we haven't triaged them yet. Committee board activity (none) New RFCs (none) Phase progression (none) IRC meeting request (none) Other RFC activity: - T262946: <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T262946> Bump Firefox version in basic support to 3.6 or newer - Some agreement between Volker and Timo to keep the scope at just the Firefox version bump and move this RFC forward. I think Volker is welcome to move this back to P4 unless I missed some other ongoing discussion? - T259771: <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T259771> RFC: Drop support for database upgrade older than two LTS releases - Discussion about upgrading from 1.16 (this humble reader says upgrading from a version that's 10 years old should not be a priority)

3 years, 6 months

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Wikitech-l October 2020