Open Source Meeting/2007-07-19

< Open Source Meeting

Open source meeting - Thursday, 2pm PT

• The "Open Source Viewer" name
• Splitting up triages
• PJIRA - email notifications or alternatives
• Peer-review and in-progress patches
• Discussion of test plans at QA Portal

Transcript (raw)

Rob Linden pulls up agenda
Soft Linden: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Meeting/Agenda
Rob Linden: thx
Soft Linden: <-- RobBot
Rob Linden: first up: naming. not much to talk about here
You: nope... just who is really interested in the name probably showed =)
Rob Linden: make sure y'all read the trademark policy
Rob Linden: it's pretty important in this case.
You: "Open Source" itself can't be trademarked
Dale Glass: got a link to that?
You: so it was just the generic name off that.. not intended elsewise
Rob Linden: http://secondlife.com/corporate/trademark/
Soft Linden: It does beg the question though - are we still looking at doing periodic builds off the svn when we've got everyone on that? I'd wondered if Dzonatas' build was meant to be a placeholder on that, or something parallel
You: I'm hoping for more formal QA on the build
You: its a lot of work
Rob Linden: the main thing is the use of "Second Life"...it's important to come up with a name that doesn't imply it's created distributed by Linden Lab
Dale Glass: hmm
Dale Glass: "You may distribute unchanged official binaries downloaded from SecondLife.com to anyone in any way subject to governing law, without receiving any further permission from Linden. "
Wyn Galbraith: What sort of QA do you need Dzonatas?
Dale Glass: this seems like the answer to what I asked ages ago
Dale Glass: but doesn't it conflict with KDU?
Poppy Linden: actually, re: OSS viewer, is this supposed to be a single central community build, or just a way for different viewers to prefix their titles?
You: Shoudl I remove the "Second Life" name from the dirtrubtion.. and just leave it on the exe?
You: Wyn, there are lots of patches in the build that need testing on different platforms.
You: We have tons of patches.. but no steps to test them.
Dale Glass: If anybody is interested, I'm slowly doing that in my repository. Working on replacing references to LL and the official website with mine, and such
Wyn Galbraith: So just choose one?
You: Poppy, with all the patches and other work put together, I hope to combine the effort for the QA
You: it beats having tons of different builds
You: and proves the patches can be applied and work together
Soft Linden: Rob's having trouble reconnecting - workin' on it
Dale Glass: say, kinda OT, but: anybody knows offhand what's the windows version of strptime? Or maybe there's something in the codebase for that which I missed?
You: Wyn, just one patch? there are many =)
Neuro Linden: i can't remember how centos do this; they strip out all the references to Red Hat and all their associated trademarks for each new build
Wyn Galbraith: Well, start with one and then the next and then the next... one a a time.
Neuro Linden: re rob
You: wb
You: I actually like "ThirdLife"... *wink*
Neuro Linden: i was thinking Segunda Vida ;)
Wyn Galbraith likes that.
Dreamsand Rental #U1N1: 
New lease: Dreamsand Rental #U1N1
Renter: Sexkitty Wildcat
You: I'll make one with that hehe
Dale Glass: but that's just the name in spanish
You: Alright... thanks for the minute Rob
Dale Glass: it might confuse spanish people
Soft Linden: Are some of these starting to be Liana questions?
Neuro Linden: dale: yeah, i know, that literally just occured to me
Poppy Linden: Soft: sounds like it :)
Rob Linden: just got caught up (Soft gave me what I missed). this page is relevant to how I think Second Life should be referenced: http://secondlife.com/corporate/trademark/services.php
Dale Glass: I'm thinking, we could probably use a patch that'd separate the branding stuff a bit
Wyn Galbraith: How about Second Look. It is a viewer right?
Wyn Galbraith: Na, to simiiar, sorry
Dale Glass: something like const LLString COMPANY_NAME "Linden Lab"; so that it could be changed in one place
Wyn Galbraith: That's actually a good idea, Dale.
Rob Linden: actually, I agree
Stevex Janus: You mignt also want to change the icons too.
Rob Linden: anything that can modularize the branding/trademarks would be a big plus
Soft Linden: If you wanted to do that in a patch, and add a doc to docs/ listing all the icon and bitmap locations that should change too, I could probably bring that in.
You: I didn't use any of the icons.
Argent Stonecutter is Online
Soft Linden: The copyright headers should stay intact, but other than that...
Stevex Janus: Then spinnining hand onthe splash screen
Wyn Galbraith: Anything that can be changed should have a placeholder where it's easy to get at and you only change it once.
Able Whitman: I agree.. Like Dale I've started to do some rebranding myself, but things are sort of scattered all over the place.
Dale Glass: BTW, if anybody wants to work on that, I'm busy with other things ATM, but my repository has a branding branch from which you can get a list of all the changes I made. That could be a start
Able Whitman: Dale, if you'd like some help producing a branding-consolidation patch, I'd be happy to help out
Argent Stonecutter is Offline
You: I'll be interested in the branding now that my internet speed just jumped.
Soft Linden: Someone do me a favor and JIRA this? I'll import and make sure Liana sees it too.
Dale Glass: I've recently coded an update checking mechanism that downloads new versions from my site. Also got an initial crash reporting script going
Soft Linden: /softask ping Liana on rebranding JIRA
/softask: Task from Soft Linden accepted by server.
Rob Linden: k....next up:
Rob Linden: splitting up triages
Dale Glass: Able, maybe a bit later, when I finish what I'm working on, but sure :-) Meanwhile you can see if you find anything useful in my repository. Mail me if you need anything of course
Able Whitman: Dale, will do :)
Rob Linden: we have two weekly triages now (Monday general triage, Tuesday UI triage)
Able Whitman: Rob, is the idea to have "themed" triages? Or just UI and general?
Rob Linden: the idea that's starting to gain some steam at Linden Lab is themed triages
Able Whitman nods
Wyn Galbraith nods and agrees.
Neuro Linden: hi liana
You: The UI triage is working well, but there is still a lot of hand-holding =p
Soft Linden: Also, the possibility of separating off some of these patch triages from general bug triages...
Able Whitman: I think component- or feature-area-specific triages are a good way to help make sure the right people can get together without having so large a group and so many issues that you get logjammed.
Wyn Galbraith: Nice legs.
Liana Linden: Hi. Sorry I'm late. Calendar malfunction.
Soft Linden: The big thing with the patch triages is we probably don't want to take just a top-N item approach with patches that might have good value, and which would get harder to merge as time goes on...
Argent Stonecutter is Online
Soft Linden: Taking an hour's worth of bug reports and importing just the top issues is a pretty good approach to matching available internal manpower. But the patches are a bit different on that count.
Wyn Galbraith: /waves at Squirrel.
Squirrel Wood: hihi
You: HI Liana
Dale Glass: btw
Dale Glass: if anybody wants to see the changes in my viewer, http://sl.daleglass.net
Dale Glass: windows installer only for now
Soft Linden: I don't know if it's final, but there's at least talk about the studio blacklight manager taking over the general bug stuff, letting Rob's hour focus on stuff the sldevers might have ready for import.
You: Soft, doesn't the OSLCC effort help with that on ability to merge patches?
Soft Linden: Sorry - didn't mean to hijack, Rob. Throw something at me if I'm disruptin' :)
Rob Linden: by all means, keep going
Able Whitman: I think it's really good to at least touch on all the JIRA issues that get imported, but I think that patches could get more attention if we had a more formalized process to code review and test patches.
Soft Linden: It might, Dzonatas. Actually, it's on the agenda two items down to see what we can do to streamline patch uptake. If nobody's got questions or suggestions on splitting up the triages, we could skip to that out of order?
Rob Linden: sure
Soft Linden: Hee. As Able says, too.
Dale Glass: Oh yeah, my previous question seems to have been ignored, and now that Liana is here...
Dale Glass: the distribution page says:
Dale Glass: "You may distribute unchanged official binaries downloaded from SecondLife.com to anyone in any way subject to governing law, without receiving any further permission from Linden"
Able Whitman: That is, if there were a well-defined way for patch submitters to have other open source contributors review and test submitted patches, it would cut down on the manpower LL would need to devote to handling them.
Dale Glass: but it's my knowledge that KDU may not be redistributed
Dale Glass: isn't there a conflict there?
Able Whitman: Sorry Soft, I'm getting ahead of things :)
Liana Linden reads...
Soft Linden: No, it's good Able - we'll get back to that in a sec :) It's exactly where I wanted to go.
Squirrel Wood wants to see procedural textures in SL ^^
Wyn Galbraith: lag test
Rob Linden: Dale: we have a distribution license for KDU. I'm not familiar with the exact tos about what is/isn't allowed, but I'm assumign that clause is consistent with our license
Liana Linden: I need to look into what our specific agreement with KDU says
Liana Linden: and my hunch is the same as Rob's . Can I get back to you next week?
Rob Linden: (one thing I should note: both Liana and I will be at OSCON next week)
Dale Glass: sure, no hurry with that
Dale Glass: I've got things mostly arranged with my installer here
Liana Linden: Was your question appropos of something in particular, Dale?
Wyn Galbraith: Don't forget to bring back stuff.
Dale Glass: Yes, I've been investigating redistribution for installing my custom viewer
Dale Glass: so far my conclusion was that I can ship everything but KDU
Liana Linden: gotcha
Rob Linden: (we've got two conversations going on here)
Dale Glass: so my installer grabs KDU from an existing install, if it can find it
Soft Linden: Rob and Liana away means yer all mine Mine MINE to move about like pawns on a chessboard, mua ha ha!!! Bring a plastic tarp, a signed permission slip from the parents, and a change of clothes next week, please.
Able Whitman: lol
Wyn Galbraith uhohs.
Dale Glass: ack, sorry if I'm interrupting
Liana Linden: Scary.
Rob Linden: so...let's get back to the conversation about patch streamlining
Wyn Galbraith has already been through Leadership Training.
Soft Linden: Hee. 'kay...
Rob Linden phears what soft has in mind
Wyn Galbraith: LOL
Neuro Linden forges permission slips for food
Able Whitman: I was okay with everything until the plastic tarp :/
Soft Linden: So, we can hash out details on how to do it on list, but the first question I wanted to field was - basically, is there an interest in testing each others' patches with review processes similar to what we do internally? I can let ya know what we do...
Wyn Galbraith: Well, that's what a company I worked for called it.
Able Whitman: Soft, in my case Yes! I will be happy to devote what time I can to doing code reviews and QA on other folks' patches.
Opensource Obscure: i'd like to help with testing but i'm not a coder, nor particularly skilled. i just can compile the viewer.
Soft Linden: Internally, we have someone else comb through a patch before it gets checked in, whether we authored it ourseles, or imported it from y'all, and just make sure that the person advocating the patch can explain and justify each change block in a way that the second understands.
You: streamlining... the effort I initiated based on last week was to starts the builds, and to set up the svn in a way that ll could import/export in bulk from.
Wyn Galbraith: Peer reviews?
Squirrel Wood: Yups. four eyes see more than two
Able Whitman nods
Soft Linden: And then the checkin also includes a test plan, explaining how you could verify that the change did what it was meant, and didn't break surrounding systems. Nothing detailed, just a line or two making it clear what systems were impacted for the second part.
Rob Linden: we've got svn.secondlife.com which we can use for this activity
Rob Linden: we can give people who have signed contrib agreements svn access
You: Rob, is that ready?
Able Whitman: Would you want these test plans in the same format as described on the QA portal? Because honestly I'm not really enamored with that format :)
Rob Linden: Dz, yes, pretty much
Poppy Linden: We tend to use a lot of collaborative tools (screen, VNC) for checking each other's code before commit
Poppy Linden: if we are remote
Soft Linden: Able: Flexible. Again - mostly wanted to gauge interest and willingness. On the list, we can come up with something sane. I wouldn't want to start by trying to impose a format.
Poppy Linden: that is something that may be more difficult
Able Whitman: Okay, flexible is good :)
Rob Linden: the idea would be we'd have a "contrib" area where community checkins would go, and we could eventually be able to point our build machines at that branch for distributing builds
You: My I suggest the use of the word "sandbox" instead of "contrib"
You: =)
Wyn Galbraith: Sandbox is good.
Soft Linden: It's certainly the more SL term :>
Rob Linden: but, per what Soft and Poppy are talking about, the VNC and screen stuff is to make sure proper Q&A occurs
Wyn Galbraith: Makes it clear, what it is. Not really, I've heard programmers in software companies call it sandbox.
Able Whitman: Rob, would you want independent testing of a patch before it's submitted to the contrib/sandbox area on the svn?
Soft Linden: Yeah. I don't know if the same tools work as well for a bunch of people working independently and voluntarily like this... VNC and screen are great for us... could be some extra comments meant to be stripped out could replace those here.
Poppy Linden: My opinion on that is that it depends how y'all want to treat the "main" sandbox branch
You: That is my concern, independt testing of every patch is slow slow for us that don't have compile farms
Rob Linden: what Poppy said
Dale Glass: hmm, what about big patches in development?
Poppy Linden: internally, we have a "release" branch, and then we have a billion other branches
Rob Linden: we could conceivably have multiple branches in the sandbox area
Able Whitman: Well, what about having two sandbox tiers, something like "stable" and "unstable", and patches go to unstable first and when they've been tested, they go to stable?
Neuro Linden: poppy: it's not *actually* a billion :)
You: Poppy, for patch testing/QA and for development of features to be more formalized
Wyn Galbraith: Or tested and untested.
Dale Glass: for example, my avatar list is currently unfinished, and about 2200 lines long
Wyn Galbraith: unstable sounds so negative.
Poppy Linden: if someone feels their branch is cooked, they send out messages saying "hey we're gonna merge" and hopefully people think that's a good idea
Rob Linden: what we do internally is we have "build me" requests, where the branch is part of the buildme request
Able Whitman: Right, and for large feature changes, it might make sense to have temporary additional branches
Wyn Galbraith: Untested code isn't nessarilly unstable.
Able Whitman: Wyn, I'm not advocating and particular semantics, I just chose two words that are opposites
Able Whitman: any*
Soft Linden: I always liked "Debian Sid." Named for Sid, the Toy Story kid next door, who was likely to break your toys.
You: the branches internally at LL look like CVS more than SVN *snicker*
Rob Linden: we clearly can't have unbounded "buildme" requests coming from the community, but we might be able to figure out a budget for something
Poppy Linden: well, what i'm getting at is that our method works for a lot of branches, which I can imagine people here are interested in
Rob Linden: ("Sid", of course, being clearly unstable)
Poppy Linden: rob, right
Dale Glass: I think we could start thinking about distributed source control
Wyn Galbraith: Tested and Untested just sound better to me. Known and unknown conditions of code.
Dale Glass: it seems like a nice model (to me at least)
Poppy Linden: it's almost like our internal system works like other distributed OSS systems :)
Poppy Linden: dale: ding :P
Dale Glass: I use SVK here
Wyn Galbraith: It's good to see these things put into place.
Rob Linden: I like distributed systems in principle. we'd need to figure out how to make sure that there's no confusion about patches being "contributed" if we're pulling them from elsewhere
Dale Glass: I mirror the LL SVN repository and publish my branch from that
Poppy Linden: scales pretty well, unless a whole lot of folks want to merge at once
Maxter Ambrose is Online
You: SVK has quirks still, its risky
Dale Glass: well, it's just what I use. If LL goes with git or whatever I'll adopt that
Poppy Linden: Rob: each branch would still have to be cleared, natch
You: the best thing about being on one SVN is the history.. doing a "svn copy" with history saves a lot of times and prevents mistakes
Dale Glass: SVK seemed to work nicely for the specific case of LL having a SVN repository
Saijanai Kuhn: Sorry I came late, are we discussing 1336 or have we gone beyond that?
Rob Linden: we're going to be paranoic and extra careful to ensure that we're not pulling in something that someone turns around and say "I didn't contribute that to you"
Soft Linden: I understood Dale's SVK writeup, but I'm not entirely clear on distributed version control systems that don't have a central authoritative repository. Anyone got a good link to look at?j
Wyn Galbraith: Saijanai: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Meeting/Agenda
Soft Linden: Maybe I'll just spend time on the Mercurial site.
Dale Glass: In my understanding, there's no center, people just agree on one
Saijanai Kuhn: thx
Dale Glass: what I mean is that technically my server would be just as good as LL's, except that LL's would be the one that people would consider official
Wyn Galbraith: np
Soft Linden: Ah, so there's still a central repository, it's just that it's a policy thing, not an architectural one.
Agathe Yoshikawa is Offline
Rob Linden: Soft, the "center" is whatever set of repositories that your build machine pulls from
You: I'm inclined to stay with SVN until GIT improves a few more issues.
Rob Linden: Sardonyx Linden is pretty heavily involved with Mercurial, so we'd probably go with that unless something really really compelling caused us to evaluate one of the others
Dale Glass: well, with svk for example: I merge changes from LL, Dzonatas could then merge changes from me, I'd then go and merge something from Able, and then LL could decide to merge that.... and so on
Rob Linden: Dale, once again, that creates big attirubtion and auditing issues
Dale Glass: well, in my case I keep feature branches
Dale Glass: currently all the code in my repository is mine
Dale Glass: if I was going to merge something external, I'd merge it into a branch, then merge that with another
Poppy Linden: well, regardless of what tool we use, the development model is still there
Soft Linden: To put a cap on the other topic - I'll write up a proposal for some kind of a peer signoff and a test plan template and post that to sldev - ping me after the meeting if you've got something you'd really want to see in there?
You: GIT is suppose to track auditing on a line by line level
Dale Glass: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Dale_Glass#Branch_Graph
Able Whitman: Soft, sounds great, thanks!
Poppy Linden: so, we've shuffled the agenda up a bit
Rob Linden: any other action items from this conversation? is there anyone (w/signed agreement on file) that's interested in helping out maintaining a sandbox branch?
You: That does bring up another topic of doing certs signing... for the future
You: I'm interested.
Soft Linden: The one we really missed was PJIRA email. I saw Rob putting some extra pressure on the hosting company again tho' :)
Poppy Linden: cool
Poppy Linden: I want that :P
Able Whitman is also interested
Wyn Galbraith: What agreement, Rob?
Rob Linden: yeah, not much to say on the topic. there was actually something on our end that wasn't the hosting company's fault
Poppy Linden: yeah, it's weird using a bugtracker that doesn't email you, very easy to forget about stuff :\
Rob Linden: Wyn....lemme get the link
Wyn Galbraith: NDA?
Rob Linden: http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/submitting
Soft Linden: http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/docs/SLVcontribution_agmt.pdf
Poppy Linden: http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/submitting
Poppy Linden: :)
Rob Linden: heh
Soft Linden: Three-way race!
Poppy Linden: we're all he same speed!
Able Whitman: lol
You: =)
Wyn Galbraith: Wow, good teamwork.
Poppy Linden: how many clicks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop?
Soft Linden: Ya, but mine differed. When that happens with the three systems on the space shuttle computers, that system gets shut down :(
Poppy Linden makes extremely regional kitsch reference...
Soft Linden: Kind of running up against time - was there anything not on the agenda we wanted to push in here?
Wyn Galbraith: I should fill one of these out maybe, even if I'm not contributing code, correct?
Rob Linden: Wyn...not strictly necessary
You: Wyn, if you are and you want it official
Wyn Galbraith will anyway. "Thanks."
Poppy Linden: yeah, it is getting to that time
Soft Linden: You might find you're in a position to contribute documentation, UI layout, or similar later. If you're motivated - may as well get that paperwork hurdle out of the way. :)
Rob Linden: we certainly won't turn it down....we do the checking at the time we accept a significant patch (that rises above typo-fixing level)
Wyn Galbraith: That's what I was thinking Soft.
Able Whitman: I'd still like to talk about the QA portal and test plans, but I'd rather table that until the next meeting, since 3 minutes isn't really enough time :)
Soft Linden: Sure. Feel free to stick around a bit afterward, can hash out some more details on just that.
Rob Linden: ah, right. yeah, take a look at what's there. I need to engage our QA team a little more on that anyway
Rob Linden: I've got a 3pm mtg that I need to go to. would someone else mind posting the transcript?