dev chat meeting: 2014-07-05 12:00 EDT

[kareila]

In a few minutes we'll be starting a meeting in #dreamwidth-dev! Please drop by if you're around and chat with us!

If you can't make today's meeting, the next meeting will be on Friday, July 11, at 10 pm EDT.

Update: Here's a list of topics we discussed today:

• profile for dw-dev community (foxfirefey)
• updating Ubuntu version on dreamhack server (sophie)
• Github issues revisited (afuna)
• what we learned at OSB
• general "what are we working on" discussion/issues
• access to old bugs from Bugzilla (exor674)
• possibly alternating chat meetings with group development time (zorkian)

And a partial list of topics to follow up with next time:

• general tracking of developer projects (wiki? milestones? other?)
• specific "what are we working on" discussion/issues (chat? blogs? other?)
• possibly moving chat meetings to every other week

In attendance were myself, _Simon_, V_PauAmma_V, louise_, foxfirefey, Afuna, exor674, alierak, zorkian, rahaeli, Momijizukamori, and Sophira.

11:05 < Kareila> okay, we're going on the record... wait for it.... 
11:05 < zorkian> I'm ishly around. Oliver will be over soon!
11:05 -!- ChanServ changed the topic of #dreamwidth-dev to: Dreamwidth Studios
      (dreamwidth.org) --  development discussion. Grab a bug and start hacking!
      || Dev chat currently in progress, transcript will be posted.
11:05 < louise_> Yeah, I actually checked the link on the original post - but
      I was still nervous
11:06  * Afuna salutes
11:06 < Kareila> zorkian: yay Oliver!
11:06 < Afuna> zorkian: :D have a good day with him!
11:06 < Sophira> (oh, and Fig does countdowns if you need them!)
11:06 < Sophira> Woo, Oliver!
11:07 < Kareila> okay, let's get started! I'll try to keep things moving but
      feel free to jump in if the spirit moves you.
11:08 < Kareila> foxfirefey: do you want to go first? you had wanted to talk
      about the dw-dev profile, I believe?
11:08 < foxfirefey> Yeah, sure, let's go!
11:08 < foxfirefey> So earlier I noticed the dw_dev profile was really sparse
11:09 < foxfirefey> and I was wondering if that was contribiting to people not
      being able to find resources they need
11:09 < foxfirefey> Mark kindly gave me the perms to go start editing it:
      http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/profile
11:09 < foxfirefey> And I would like to open the floor to any suggestions of
      things to add or edit
11:09 < Kareila> I like that you put the wiki links up there. not sure what
      else to suggest... anyone?
11:10 < Sophira> For those wondering, here's how the page used to look:
      https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fdw-dev.dreamwidth.org%2Fprofile&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
11:10 < Sophira> I definitely like the expanded bio.
11:10 < Kareila> oh, (states/regions/territories) sadface. lol.
11:10 < louise_> I've got a list of pages I've bookmarked in pinboard which
      I've found useful.  Some are out of date now, but I could trim it and
      PM foxfirefey a list.
11:10 < Afuna> ugh that bug won't ever go away :|
11:10 < foxfirefey> Okay, thanks!
11:10 < Kareila> great, thanks louise_ 
11:11 < Sophira> Huh, yeah, I see that didn't show up in the old page.
11:12 < louise_> OK, I've made a note.
11:12 < Afuna> hmm. might I suggest crosslinking
      https://github.com/dreamwidth/dw-free/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md
      more explicitly to othe dw-dev profile?
11:12 < Kareila> yeah, I think it's a form default issue. I've had success
      clearing it out manually.
11:12 < foxfirefey> Okay, that's easy enough!
11:13 < foxfirefey> Done
11:14 < Sophira> Are there any more interests we might want to put in?
11:14 < Kareila> okay, I suggest if anyone has further improvements to
      suggest, contact fey directly.
11:14 < foxfirefey> Yup, works for me
11:14 < foxfirefey> Onward!
11:14 < Sophira> Hah, okay.
11:14 < Kareila> thanks for working on it :)
11:14 < Sophira> Seconded!
11:15 < Kareila> okay, next item: Sophira wanted some feedback concerning the
      Dreamhack server, which needs to be upgraded soon.
11:15 < Sophira> Yep. Essentially, it looks like a straight upgrade isn't going
      to be as easy as I hoped for.
11:16 < foxfirefey> I did an upgrade recently on a thing and Apache 2.4 is a
      whole different animal
11:16 < Sophira> I've been looking into it and it looks like
      "do-release-upgrade" is supposed to do it, but on the DH machine I
      believe it wouldn't work as expected.
11:16 < Sophira> Oh?
11:17 < foxfirefey> Yes--you'll want to make sure the new replaced settings
      are gotten right, there's some more locked down permissions stuff, and
      by default virtual host config files must end in .conf
11:17 < Sophira> Okay.
11:17 < foxfirefey> I mention this just because I thought I had an easy upgrade
      path and got blindsided at an inconvenient time, so wanted to warn you
11:17 < Sophira> Thank you.
11:17 < Kareila> hi Momiji! we're talking about upgrading the dreamhack server.
      you haven't missed much.
11:18 < Sophira> Last time we did an OS upgrade, we did it by having two 'hack
      servers at once and migrating from one to the other.
11:18 < foxfirefey> That seems like a very good idea for this
11:18 < Sophira> Yeah, I'm thinking maybe it might be worth doing the same again.
11:18 < zorkian> That'd be fine
11:19 < zorkian> I can spin up a new box, just let me know when it'd be
      convenient for you
11:19 < exor674> zorkian: speaking of boxes, ( pinging foxfirefey here too )
11:20 < Sophira> zorkian: I forget, how do the specs of the devhack box compare
      with the actual machine? If they're the same, we could just use that and
      I can set up the old server to be a new devhack.
11:20 < Sophira> I think it's worse, though.
11:20 < exor674> zorkian: the idea would be to have me as a second sudo-able
      user on the wiki box, in case of busses/insanely long bouts of flu/etc
      and wikibørk
11:20 < foxfirefey> ah yes
11:21 < Sophira> Just checked - the devhack box is definitely lower spec.
11:21  * zorkian returns with a keyboard, instead of just his phone
11:22 < Sophira> Hee.
11:22 < zorkian> Sophira: sorry, what do you mean 'devhack box vs actual machine'?
11:23 < Sophira> zorkian: You set up a devhack slice for me at one point, which
      is where I do changes to the Dreamhack stuff and push them to my repo to
      do pull requests from. It's functionally identical to the actual Dreamhack
      slice in most respects.
11:24 < zorkian> Oh! right, the dev-hack box is the development hack box, haha.
      I was parsing dev-hack wrong, sorry. :)
11:24 < rahaeli> ack! sorry i'm late, folks
11:24 < Sophira> Ah yeah.
11:24 < Kareila> hi rah! glad you could join us :)
11:24 < Kareila> hi Clifstan!
11:25 < Sophira> Hey Rah!
11:25 < Sophira> And hi Clifstan :)
11:25 < Momijizukamori> (I /am/ actually here too, I just have nothing to say *g*)
11:25 < Kareila> s'fine :)
11:25 < Clifstan> Hi Sophira :-)
11:25 < rahaeli> i was helping sarah with house stuff and lost track of time
11:25 < Clifstan> If there's a meeting I'm not really here forit
11:26 < Kareila> yes, we're doing dev chat right now
11:26 < Clifstan> just incidentally present for the moment and may vanish
      without warning at any time
11:26 < Kareila> fair enough :)
11:26 < zorkian> Sophira: we definitely used a smaller box for that. anyway,
      they are resizeable, so we can definitely still 'turn the X into Y' if
      you want. basically however you think it would be most convenient to do,
      I can shuffle the hardware around for that
11:27 < alierak> (afk for a little)
11:27 < Kareila> Sophira: does that address your concerns? I seem to recall you
      also had a question about setting up github repositories for dh users?
11:28 < Sophira> Well, I was mainly proposing that to make it more convenient
      for you - no need to spin up an additional slice or spend more than you
      need to. But given the circumstances, it might just be better to do a
      new slice.
11:29 < Sophira> Kareila: Yeah, that addresses the upgrade concerns. I do have
      another question, yes.
11:29 < Sophira> But not about GitHub repositories.
11:29 < Kareila> oh, sorry. what was it?
11:30 < Sophira> Basically, the new user/reinstall setup process currently
      clones the GitHub repository like normal, which only creates the develop
      and master branches locally. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to
      have it automatically map the remote branches in the fork to local
      branches, too.
11:30 < zorkian> that's mostly all the release branches right?
11:30 < Sophira> No, this would be from their fork.
11:31 < Kareila> hmm, I think that might be advisable. fewer pain points for
      proceeding with development.
11:31 < Sophira> As in, if they were in the middle of a branch and messed up
      and reinstalled, should the new clone have a mapping of the
      branch-in-progress already tracked?
11:31  * Sophira nods.
11:31 < Sophira> Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
11:31 < Kareila> is that difficult to do?
11:32 < Sophira> No, it's pretty easy.
11:32 < Sophira> I actually have it partly implemented on dev-hack already, but
      was just seeking input.
11:32 < Kareila> great! I don't see any downside to setting it up that way.
11:32 < Sophira> Well, the downside is consistency - people might wonder why
      "git pull" works on these tracked branches but not on new branches that
      they've pushed but haven't tracked.
11:33 < Sophira> Why did "git pull" on its own not work before the reinstall,
      but does now? Etc.
11:34 < Kareila> same way we work through any other change: make developers
      aware of it here and on the dw-dev community, maybe update the relevant
      wiki page if there is one (and maybe make one if there isn't), and move
      on? :)
11:35 < V_PauAmma_V> (to Sophira) Maybe worth asking on dw_dev or dw_dev_training?
11:35 < Sophira> Kareila: Fair enough, that sounds good.
11:36 < Sophira> V_PauAmma_V: I think documenting it is probably likely to be
      enough in this case.
11:36 < Kareila> before we move on, zorkian, did you see exor674's question
      about sudo access on the wiki box?
11:36 < zorkian> oh no, sorry.
11:37 < zorkian> reducing bus factor is great, thank you dre for volunteering :)
11:37 < Sophira> But yeah, I think just mention that the reinstaller/new user
      process automatically tracks your branches is going to be enough, along
      with an explanation of what tracking branches are and how to use them
      yourself, etc.
11:38 < Sophira> And now I think I'm done. :) I had another thing but I didn't
      list it and can't remember what it is now anyway, so.
11:38 < Sophira> Next meeting, perhaps :)
11:38 < V_PauAmma_V> (to Sophira) Oh. I thought you meant those questions from
      the PoV of actual maybe-confused users.
11:38 < Kareila> that sounds excellent. I'm a little fuzzy on the concept myself.
11:38 < Sophira> V_PauAmma_V: I did.
11:39 < Kareila> okay, let's move on. I wanted to open up the floor a bit to
      see if anyone had any new questions or concerns about using Github issues
      since our discussion two weeks ago.
11:40 < Kareila> I know it's still a work in progress, but where are the worst
      pain points right now?
11:41 < Sophira> I think searching is still an issue, but we went through that
      last time. It's also not something we can do much about.
11:42 < foxfirefey> I don't know if it classifies as a pain point but we don't
      have a wiki page outlining The Plan on there as far as I know
11:42 < Kareila> is there a plan? or are we just making it up as we go :)
11:42 < Sophira> I did see a post on dw_dev recently about auto-tagging for
      CLAs, I think?
11:42 < Sophira> http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/157276.html
11:42 < Momijizukamori> Tagging would be mine - both when opening new issues,
      and we still don't have site section tags
11:42 < Kareila> I was going to leave that up to rahaeli - we only see a few new
      contributors a year, so I'm not sure that's in need of automating right now.
11:43 < rahaeli> I found a thing that would track CLAs and whether they'd been
      submitted, but after further investigation, we found it wouldn't work
      right now with organization repos
11:44 < rahaeli> so right now i think we'll just leave it with, people won't be
      added to the org without a CLA and other than that we'll just cope
11:44  * Kareila nods.
11:45 < Kareila> Afuna: do I remember correctly that we do support tags being
      added in new issues by parsing the body of the issue text?
11:45 < Afuna> yes, though I don't think that's been publicized yet!
11:45 < Kareila> I seem to recall reading that somewhere but haven't tested it.
11:45 < Kareila> I wasn't sure if it was working or still in the planning stage :)
11:46 < Momijizukamori> ^ that
11:46 < rahaeli> we need to work up the categories of area-of-the-code to tag
      for, but meh, my categorization brain is busted
11:46 < Kareila> where's kaberett when you need a categorizer
11:46 < Sophira> Oh yeah, I had a question about that. Should we use some sort
      of clearly machine-readable syntax for that? I believe at the moment it
      looks for the word "Claimed" - should we have it looking for a 'command'
      like !claim or similar that wouldn't show up in anything other than a claim?
11:47 < Kareila> I think that was undecided? I don't have an opinion on the matter myself.
11:47 < rahaeli> i'd rather it be as easy as possible
11:47 < Afuna> that's a different thing sophira! this one was for the categorization
11:47 < rahaeli> liberal in what you accept, etc
11:47 < exor674> if this isn't publicized yet, should we be talking about it here?
11:47 < Sophira> Oh, sorry.
11:47 < Afuna> I can see it both ways, but I lean towards tagging needing to be
      explicit claiming not so much
11:47 < rahaeli> exor674: i don't have a problem with talking about it, it was
      committed publicly
11:48 < exor674> okay!
11:48 < rahaeli> we jsut haven't written up instructions yet :P
11:48 < Afuna> hee ethat
11:48 < Afuna> https://gist.github.com/afuna/4425aea6aec5f2b10756 is the gist
      of what I have
11:48 < Sophira> I see what you did there.
11:48 < Sophira> ;p
11:48 < Afuna> :)
11:49 < exor674> I think having it not-explicit is fine until we have a bug
      about claiming things
11:49 < Afuna> hahhaah that would be hilarious
11:49 < exor674> and then suddenly, assignee fight
11:49 < Afuna> "it's okay you can allll have it \o/"
11:50 < Sophira> exor674: Exactly. The OpenID claim functionality would have
      been hilarious as an issue in GHI ;p
11:50 < Afuna> but yeah the ability to claim a bug and tag a bug are both
      already possible
11:50 < Kareila> I think I saw the code change go by but wasn't sure if it
      was live
11:50 < Afuna> which I suppose sort of begs the qustion of adding people to
      the org...
11:51 < Afuna> gotcha
11:51 < Afuna> pushed it live so that when we have instrutions it'll just start
      working
11:51 < Kareila> oh, good!
11:51 < Kareila> okay, so where are we in making instructions?
11:51 < Afuna> uhhhhhh. barebones! https://gist.github.com/afuna/4425aea6aec5f2b10756
11:52 < Kareila> (if this was discussed elsewhere and I missed it, I apologize)
11:52 < Afuna> (no I don't think it has)
11:52 < Afuna> I think it could do with integrating into the existing sticky
      entry on github stuff at smoe point
11:53 < rahaeli> i did turn off that entry as sticky
11:53 < Afuna> but probabyl after it's had its own entry for clarity/visibility
11:53 < Kareila> I, uh, just noticed I don't think it's sticky any more
11:53 < Afuna> ahhh yeah? didn't realize!
11:53 < rahaeli> yeah, every time i went to dw-dev i had to scroll and scroll
      past it, and i figured 2 months was long enough to keep it sticky!
11:53 < Afuna> hehehehe
11:53 < Afuna> yeah okay
11:53 < Afuna> so I guess I have two things about adding people to a team:
11:54 < Afuna> right now we have a lot of people not in the dreamwidth team
      that probably should be. is it reasonable to do it manually? and to have
      future ones added when they send in a CLA (as per discussion above)
11:55 < Kareila> sounds reasonable to me?
11:55 < Afuna> okay!
11:56 < Afuna> the second thing, and I realized I misstated above, I meant I
      had things to say about github, not just about adding people
11:56 < Afuna> but the second thing, milestones! I'd like to propose a change
      to milestones versus described in the previously sticky entry
11:56 < Afuna> and suggest we start using them for a more project-based
      approach. I've played around with it a bit in
      https://github.com/dreamwidth/dw-free/issues/milestones
11:57 < rahaeli> that sounds great to me, easier to track things
11:57 < _Simon_> I like the "curated" category - that would have been useful
      in 'zilla days
11:58 < _Simon_> Can bugs be assigned to more than one milestone?
11:58 < Afuna> _Simon_: no sadly!
11:58 < _Simon_> ah
11:58 < Afuna> but bugscan have multiple labels
11:58 < _Simon_> A result of using milestones more as tags, I guess...
11:58 < Afuna> and we have an automatically applied "status: untriaged" label
      to all incoming bugs
11:58 < exor674> so we could have a curated tag>?
11:58 < _Simon_> I think in that case there may be issues with overlaps. e.g.
      how about an unclaimed high-impact bug, which should be in unclaimed and
      Curated?
11:59 < Afuna> oh yeah I misunderstood what curated meant
11:59 < Sophira> Hmm. The milestone progress bar is based on the total number
      of issues with that milestone that have been closed, right? In that case,
      it seems like it would be very misleading.
11:59 < Afuna> I thought that meant thinsg that had been signed off on
11:59 < _Simon_> What's the advantage of using milestones for this stuff rather
      than tags? (I don't know git tags well)
11:59 < Afuna> versus things that osmeone randomly filed
11:59 < Kareila> actually, I think that is what it means, fu.
11:59 < Afuna> so those milestones area cutally a mix
11:59 < rahaeli> the curated/unclaimed/etc milestones should be converted to
      tags, i think
12:00 < _Simon_> Seems to me that DW doesn't really *have* milestones, because
      we don't have releases, so we're trying to use a feature for what it
      isn't really designed for. Which may not be a problem, but need to be
      clear about why :-)
12:00 < Sophira> _Simon_: To be clear, git tags aren't the same as GitHub tags.
12:00 < Afuna> curated, unclaimed, pull requests, and in progress are the
      earlier suggested way of doing them
12:00 < _Simon_> Sophira: sorry, I was thinking github tags there, not git ones
12:00 < Afuna> and I'm suggesting applying milestones, as, e.g.,
      mobile-friendly/new post entry/foundation conversion (and of course other
      big projects!)
12:01 < _Simon_> They aren't milestones - they are major goals. But what if
      there is an unclaimed bug about the new post entry page?
12:01 < _Simon_> (or am I missing the point?)
12:01 < zorkian> the reason they're not tags is because the milestones were
      'can only be one of' and tags are 'can apply any'
12:01 < Kareila> _Simon_ does have a good point, though, in that unclaimed and
      curated can overlap.
12:01 < Afuna> _Simon_: the unclaimed tags, etc, are the ones I want to go away
12:01 < _Simon_> ah, sorry
12:01 < Afuna> sorry for being unclear so far!
12:02 < Kareila> no, no, this is great. let's has this out, I think it will be
      really helpful for everyone.
12:02 < _Simon_> so I think my point is "before using milestones for this, think
      very carefully about whether they could overlap - and whether whatever the
      benefits are from using milestones outweigh potential future confusion"
12:02 < rahaeli> but yeah, a lot of this is "trying to use a product that is not
      designed for our workflow and make it fit our workflow", so there's always
      going to be some trial and error
12:02 < Kareila> ^hash
12:02 < zorkian> rahaeli: yeah. and to that point, we should be willing to
      adjust our workflow some to make it work well with the product, too.
12:03 < _Simon_> e.g. the three major projects that you've listed probably don't
      overlap... ubt might some in the future?
12:03 < Sophira> I think the thing with milestones is that they only work if you
      don't add more issues to the milestones after creation. I think they're
      intended for "we have to close *these* issues before the next release."
12:03 < _Simon_> e.g. there could be a bug that was both related to foundation
      conversion and to some other major goal, perhaps
12:03 < Afuna> I think unclaimed maps to not having an assignee; in progress
      maps to an assignee; pull requests maps to having a pull request; and
      curated is anything which has been tagged so it's no longer "status: untriaged"
12:03 < _Simon_> Sophira: AH!
12:03 < _Simon_> oh? That's not how I read curated at all.
12:04 < _Simon_> I had interpreted it, based on the description on that page,
      as "we'd really like these bugs fixed, if you're not bothered as to what
      you work on" ;-)
12:04 < Afuna> priority or severity tags? *g*
12:04 < _Simon_> well, yes? :)
12:04 < Kareila> I think that's a good thing to have, but yeah, priority is a
      more apt term.
12:05 < _Simon_> in that case Curated needs to have its description edited, and
      possibly its name changed to "triaged & unclaimed" or something
12:06 < Kareila> yes, and make the expected sequence clearer.
12:06 < Sophira> I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure our usage of milestones
      currently is going to be useful. At the very least, I think milestones
      should be used only where a progress bar actually makes sense.
12:06 < zorkian> my intent with Curated was "things that Someone With Knowledge
      has indicated should be solved sooner rather than later"
12:06 < zorkian> or in essence, basically, I always ask rah "what are the top 3
      things that need doing" so I can pick tasks (since I don't usually have
      enough state to adequately prioritize) and the idea was that she/someone
      could maintain that top N list
12:06 < Kareila> and an item would drop out once it was assigned?
12:07 < zorkian> that said, I don't know that it is actually a good use of a
      milestone :)
12:07 < Afuna> hehehe
12:07 < zorkian> possibly, we hadn't used it in practice so it was all theoretical
12:07 < Afuna> I do like that ide though and am totally in favor of haing a tag
12:07 < zorkian> a tag would work just fine for that 'why: rahsaidso' etc
12:07 < Afuna> hahahahha
12:07 < Afuna> yespls :)
12:08 < rahaeli> heeee
12:08  * V_PauAmma_V thought curated meant "has been assigned meaningful
      tags/milestones/whatever" - the opposite of untriaged
12:08 < _Simon_> Agree with Sophira
12:08 < rahaeli> zorkian: that reminds me, i want to nag you about the pdf
      download thing again ;)
12:08 < Sophira> I think everything we're currently using milestones for should
      be replaced by tags - they're far more flexible and you can still browse
      issues by tag. But that's possibly just me.
12:08 < _Simon_> still agree with Sophira :-)
12:08 < Kareila> okay. this is sounding like a discussion that would benefit
      from thoughtful reflection, so let's move it to a dw-dev post.
12:09 < Sophira> Sounds good!
12:09 < Kareila> I'll volunteer to summarize what we've discussed so far and
      post it separately from the general chat log, and people can have a
      threaded discussion there.
12:09 < zorkian> cool :)
12:09 < Afuna> sounds good!
12:09 < Sophira> That'll be awesome, thank you. :)
12:10 < Kareila> Afuna: can I link your gist there as well>
12:10 < Kareila> ?
12:10 < Afuna> Kareila: feel free!
12:10 < Afuna> (please note though I don't tihnk I've mentioned claiming there
      at all)
12:10 < Kareila> oh sure! I think we can leave that aside for now.
12:10  * Afuna salutes :)
12:11 < Kareila> categorizing and claiming are two different discussions, I think.
12:11 < Afuna> yeah fair
12:11 < Kareila> right! moving on then.
12:12 < Kareila> my next agenda item is "what we learned at OSB" which I guess
      is up to those of us here who were there
12:14 < Kareila> one thing that came up is the idea of doing zero2perl for real.
      we discussed it a bit after YAPC last year, but several people at OSB
      said they would be interested in making that actually happen.
12:14 < _Simon_> zero2perl = some kind of perl bootcamp?
12:15 < Kareila> yeah, a gentle introduction to programming perl for people
      who have never programmed before and want to start.
12:15 < _Simon_> thanks
12:15 < rahaeli> "zero to perl" is from the perl-community's habit of running
      tutorials (called "zero to perl" tutorials)
12:15 < louise_> miss_kat set up a zero2perl community but it never really went
      anywhere.
12:15 < Kareila> YAPC had a workshop that claimed to do that, but the
      non-programmers we had in attendance were traumatized by the experience.
12:16 < louise_> She asked me to help but it all came a bit suddenly and a bad
      time and I wasn't able to mashall my  old lecture notes into anything
      sensible.
12:16 < louise_> But I do have old perl lecture notes and exercises which might
      form a starting point for something.
12:17 < Kareila> I have some ideas of my own, but I welcome any and all
      assistance :)
12:17 < rahaeli> IIRC, pjf has lent us his training notes, too
12:17 < rahaeli> if not, i'm sure he would :)
12:17 < exor674> Kareila: was there ever a writeup from anyone as to why it
      was so horrible?
12:17 < rahaeli> he's a perl trainer by profession so he's got tons of
      experience in it
12:17 < Kareila> I think he was planning to! I haven't gotten a hold of him yet
      to discuss it
12:17 < louise_> My lecture notes are nearly 10 years out of date at this
      point - I realised when I looked them over that a lot of updating would
      be needed.
12:17 < Sophira> I'll be happy to help with zero2perl. I would have done more
      already but was waiting to hear something from Kat.
12:18 < rahaeli> exor674: i don't think so, but it was basically "let's teach
      you complicated advanced shit before teaching you what a variable is"
12:18 < exor674> louise_: bah, Perl 5.6 is Perl, right?
12:18 < Kareila> Kat couldn't be with us today because she's working a con this
      weekend.
12:18 < V_PauAmma_V> (to louise_) As long as it's not perl4 or earlier...
12:19 < exor674> was there ever a perl 1 or did they start elsewheree?
12:19 < Sophira> Or perl6?
12:19 < louise_> I also wondered if a specific zero2dreamwidth might be
      appropriate.  You'd jump into things like objects much sooner.
12:19 < Sophira> Well, I've already put some posts in dw_dev_training along
      those lines.
12:20 < Sophira> http://dw-dev-training.dreamwidth.org/tag/object-oriented+programming
12:20 < Sophira> I've been meaning to do more, but haven't done so so far.
12:20 < Kareila> I'd like to put a post up with my ideas for structuring, but
      I wanted to talk to Paul first.
12:21 < Kareila> I will definitely be excited to have your help though :)
12:21 < louise_> It's probably important not to underestimate the time needed
      to do something like this properly.  It used to take me a day to put
      together a 1 hour lecture.
12:22 < Sophira> Oh, agreed. I spent quite a long time with these posts.
12:22 < Sophira> I don't know how long; not as long as a day, but still.
12:23 < Kareila> so that's one thing that came out of my time at OSB. I have
      a few other ideas floating around, but they haven't quite settled yet.
12:23 < louise_> Well I was starting from zero perl myself at the time, so I
      was learning as I wrote the damn things.
12:23 < alierak> I don't think you can write one without learning something,
      even where we are now.
12:24  * Sophira nods.
12:24 < Momijizukamori> I ended up having a discussion at OSB about the style
      system and the fact that parts of it are not really newcomer friendly,
      and difficult to explain - though we didn't really have much in the way
      of ideas for improvement
12:25 < Kareila> right, it is what it is largely because of what we inherited.
12:26 < Momijizukamori> Yeah - core2 is a massive improvement over core1, but
      the problems are in S2 and the layers system, really
12:27 < Momijizukamori> I've written up instructions for a user to make a
      really small S2 change to their layout and it ended up being at least
      two paragraphs just explaining all the places they had to go to grab
      different bits and pieces to make that one change
12:27 < Kareila> oh, and Momiji and I discussed possibly doing one of the
      online Javascript classes together.
12:28 < Afuna> yeah :( I have vague ideas about fixing the interface, without
      actually changing how the s2 layers system works
12:28 < Afuna> but... time. time meh
12:28 < Kareila> yeah, time. priorities. (waves hands)
12:28 < exor674> next topic, achieving human cloning?
12:28 < exor674> 
12:28 < Afuna> (but basically creating a layer then creating a style then
      choosing a style is clunky and I bet that coud be made into one page
      and less clunky but *hands*)
12:29 < Momijizukamori> Yeah, I realize sweeping S2 changes are low priority *g*
      just something to let percolate, I think
12:29 < Afuna> hahaha
12:29 < Sophira> I will admit, on LJ I stayed on S1 for the longest time both
      because I considered it easier to use and for the ability to use different
      styles on different pages. Disregarding the second thing for the moment,
      yeah... S2 is insanely powerful, but it pays a price for it.
12:29 < Sophira> I'm not suggesting DW uses S1, obviously.
12:29 < Sophira> No way :D
12:29 < Afuna> but oh man imagine this: create a new style, and then instead
      of going to a different page to create a new layer and then going back
      to the first page to create your style -- just being able to assign
      "new layer" :D
12:29 < Sophira> But S1 did have its advantages.
12:30 < Afuna> it wouldn't fix everything but it would at least reduce those
      two paragraphs to... .less?
12:30 < Momijizukamori> Yeah, it was simpler from a templating standpoint
12:30 < Momijizukamori> (S1, I mean)
12:30 < exor674> I could always just finish implementing this, Sophira?
      http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layersource?id=1074&fmt=html :P
12:30 < Afuna> (yeah explaining how to put all the s2 layers together was my
      least favorite part of helping out in layout communities Back In The Day)
12:30 < Kareila> Oh! we got a lot of positive response to the storytime with
      Kat and Azz talk, including some interest in the source code for our qdb.
12:31 < Sophira> Honestly, I'd love the ability to mix-and-match S2 styles for
      different pages, like you could in S1.
12:31 < Sophira> But that's getting off-topic.
12:32 < Sophira> Kareila: Yeah, people mentioned that to me.
12:32 < Momijizukamori> (one last possibility to throw out for the S2 discussion -
      maybe having a simple templating interface to S2, so people who want to
      change big elements for their styles can do it without worrying about all
      the little details? Something like Movable Type or Tumblr's templating
      language)
12:32 < Sophira> I do want to open it up.
12:33 < Sophira> The current OpenID code a bit... interesting, shall we say.
12:33 < Sophira> ^is
12:33 < Kareila> but right now, you've got the dreamhack upgrade to worry about,
      so let's discuss that another time. :)
12:33 < Sophira> Okay.
12:34 < Kareila> the next item on my agenda was general "what are we working
      on" discussion/issues
12:34 < Kareila> both in particular of what is each of us doing right now,
      and generally the best way to keep people updated
12:35 < Momijizukamori> I can start, I suppose?
12:35 < Kareila> sure, go ahead!
12:35 < Sophira> I actually have a question related to an issue I'm working on,
      which is the /data/interests API that I posted about in dw_dev just
      before this meeting started.
12:35 < Sophira> Momiji, you first :D
12:36 < Momijizukamori> I've mostly been tackling the styles backlog which
      isn't too bad right now, and then prodding at the new style search page.
      I kind of need outside assistance on two things
12:37 < Momijizukamori> one is the new search because it's still not beta-ready
      and Javascript is basically arcane magic to me, which I think is where a
      lot of the work needs to happen next
12:37 < Momijizukamori> and the second is specific to Afuna or zorkian, which
      is that I'd like to get around to setting up using palimg for layouts but
      iirc that needed some changes places other than just core2 and I don't
      know where
12:38 < zorkian> ah hmm, I don't know off the top of my head, maybe fu? if not
      I'm sure it could be figured out
12:39 < Sophira> I can help take a look at the style search. I don't have much
      experience with it, but I might be able to help.
12:39 < Afuna> hmm not off the top of my head either but that doesn't mean we
      can't figure it out!
12:39 < Momijizukamori> zorkian: I know when we first had a discussion about
      this aaaages ago, you mentioned wanting to set up caching for them in
      Varnish
12:39 < Momijizukamori> and then the other thing was I think pathing
12:40 < zorkian> you thinking palimg for images that we host?
12:40 < Momijizukamori> zorkian: yeah
12:41 < Momijizukamori> Sophira: even another set of eyes might help, honestly.
      the Javascript on that page is really convoluted and... multiple places
12:41 < Sophira> x/y
12:41 < Sophira> I mean.
12:41  * Sophira nods.
12:41 < zorkian> okay, that should be pretty straightforward. the varnish
      caching is easy. the pathing should already exist for doing palimg
      since that's implemented in perlbal
12:41 < zorkian> but we probably have to expose that in core2
12:41 < Sophira> (sorry, "/y" is an alias I have for "/me nods.", and I
      accidentally put an 'x' before it)
12:41 < Sophira> But yeah, I know JS.
12:42 < Momijizukamori> zorkian: I think core2 has it partially exposed, though
      the discussion might have been setting up a second palimg directory so we
      can keep the styles stuff seperate from other palimg stuff?
12:43 < Afuna> hmmm. I don't think we have lots of non-styles stuff that's
      in palimg
12:43 < Momijizukamori> (but I originally filed the bug like two years ago so I
      can't remember the exact discussion we had in IRC)
12:43 < zorkian> okay; well, in the interest of dev-chat, we should probably
      take this offline / to a sidebar / whatever you want to call it and we
      can figure it out :)
12:43 < Afuna> all the images in htdocs/palimg are all from styles (or
      the navstrip)
12:44 < Momijizukamori> zorkian: sure thing *g*
12:44 < Sophira> Momijizukamori: How will you want to go through with the style
      search stuff?
12:45 < Sophira> (/msg, public IRC, DW PM, etc?)
12:46 < Momijizukamori> Sophira: any of those work? DW PM or a post somewhere
      might be best just for time zone diffs
12:46 < Sophira> Depending on whether other people are interested in helping,
      we could give it a go after the dev meeting in here, maybe.
12:46 < Sophira> Okay.
12:47 < Afuna> I'd be happy to participate at some point, but probably going to
      fall asleep soon after today's dev meeting wraps up
12:47 < Kareila> thanks Sophira! now, what was your question about the
      interests data?
12:48 < _Simon_> Right, I have to go for another meeting (which has a higher
      priority because I'm chairing it.) Have fun all :-)
12:48 < Sophira> Well, the main code for that's already been committed, but
      part of what it does is remove a small, little-used function where you
      could give an interest name and it would return the count. That's all
      it would return, so it wasn't much use by itself, and it was advised
      that I could remove it.
12:48 < Kareila> thanks for stopping by, _Simon_! ttyl :)
12:48 < Sophira> See ya, Simon!
12:49 < Sophira> I have ideas for how the function could be expanded, however,
      which I only thought of after the PR had been merged.
12:50 < Sophira> Basically, would we want a function where you can give an
      interest name or ID, and have it return the count plus the 100 (say)
      most recently-active users who have that interest?
12:50 < zorkian> do we even have that data?
12:50 < Sophira> This is similar to what you can already get through the Web
      interface.
12:50 < Sophira> Yes.
12:50 < Sophira> You can already get it.
12:50 < zorkian> awesome.
12:50 < Sophira> http://www.dreamwidth.org/interests?int=dreamwidth
12:51 < Sophira> That page sorts by last updated time, most recent first.
12:51 < Kareila> so what's the use case for exposing it through an API?
12:51 < rahaeli> in general i am in favor of anything available on the website
      should be available through automated means
12:51 < rahaeli> (thus reducing the motive for people to screenscrape)
12:52 < Sophira> Kareila: Personally, I've used this information on LJ to find
      interests that are similar to other interests by collating the most
      popular interests among users who have the named interest.
12:52 < exor674> Sophira: so possibly http://www.dreamwidth.org/interests.json?int=dreamwidth
12:52 < exor674> unless we want to have the automated bits seperate from
      the normal bits
12:52 < Sophira> exor674: Exactly.
12:53 < Kareila> okay, if you have an idea how to proceed and think it might
      be useful, I don't see why not.
12:54 < Sophira> Now, the Web interface exposes users in a paged fashion; I'm
      uncertain what the best way to do that via API would be, especially for
      extremely popular interests. I think the Web interface is capped at 500.
12:54 < Sophira> But it pages that 500 over 17 pages.
12:55 < Sophira> Would returning 500 users at once be a good idea?
12:55 < rahaeli> zorkian: do you think that paging is because of the db
      queries, or to try to keep the page size down visually?
12:56 < exor674> we can return thousands of users on edges, I think
12:56 < rahaeli> i can't remember anything about when that got added to the
      code, heh
12:56 < rahaeli> it might've been before both our times
12:56 < Sophira> Well, LJ certainly had this feature when we forked.
12:56 < Kareila> IIRC from when I converted that page to TT, I think it gets
      all the users and then displays a page at a time for screen-size reasons.
12:57 < Kareila> it might load only the usernames for the ones displayed, but
      I'm pretty sure it preloads all the matching userids, at any rate.
12:58 < exor674> also I think we have a lot of memcache
12:58 < Sophira> the other question is: Should the API version allow doing this
      by interest ID, or just name? The downside to allowing interest IDs is
      that someone could potentially try to enumerate them all, which doesn't
      pose any privacy issues but could still potentially be problematic from
      /a "hammering at the server" view. But our bot policy would cover that.
12:58 < Sophira> Okay.
12:58 < zorkian> rahaeli: pretty sure it's for visual.
12:59 < exor674> Sophira: someone can enumerate pretty much all of them anyway
12:59 < rahaeli> yeah that was my gut instinct too
12:59 < zorkian> also, the web page has to load a lot more data to display
      things -- users, account types, default userpic, etc
12:59 < exor674> I'd imagine anyone with a linked interest would have at least
      ONE edge with someone
12:59 < zorkian> but for an API, we would jsut return basic data
12:59 < exor674> it'd probably take a week to walk everything
12:59 < exor674> if they're nice
12:59 < Sophira> Well, I'd say userid, username and account type would be enough.
12:59 < zorkian> Sophira: we don't allow enumeration by IDs as a general rule
13:00 < Sophira> Okay.
13:00 < zorkian> so without a really good reason, let's not
13:00 < Kareila> okay, we're coming up on the two hour mark.
13:00  * zorkian is a two hour mark! and will pumpkin soon, as ollie is on his way
13:01 < Sophira> Sorry, I didn't mean to hog everything :(
13:01 < Kareila> I'm going to say let's quickly address the last two issues on
      the agenda and then call it a day
13:01 < Kareila> it's fine Sophira! this has all been very productive.
13:01 < exor674> Okay. I think it's me next
13:02 < Kareila> yup, you're up
13:02 < exor674> I've really not made any progress on making the bug data I
      have sharable
13:02 < exor674> I need to clean out all security/private bugs
13:02 < Kareila> so for now, people continue to ask you if they need specific
      info?
13:02 < exor674> as well as need some place to host the data that's not my
      personal box
13:02 < exor674> yep
13:02 < exor674> ( possibly throw it on the wiki box )
13:03 < Kareila> good enough! and thank you for doing that, it's a huge relief
      for me :)
13:03 < foxfirefey> Dre: wiki box is a good place for this IMO
13:03 < Kareila> and the last thing was that Mark wanted to discuss scheduling
      time for us to be together like this but doing development work instead
      of chatting?
13:03 < Sophira> Agreed. I was going to offer a spot on the Dreamhack box but
      the wiki box makes a lot of sense - more documentation. :)
13:03 < rahaeli> exor674: thank you so much for doing that btw
13:04 < zorkian> ah-hah! I wondered what my agenda item was, heh
13:04 < Sophira> I like the idea of alternate weeks dev/dev talk.
13:04 < exor674> I probably wantto move teh perldoc documentation to the wiki
      box too, maybe
13:04 < Kareila> I hadn't intended to take last week off, but yeah, I think
      alternating weeks can work in the future
13:04 < exor674> it fits better, especially now that we're not sharing fey's
      personal box
13:04 < foxfirefey> indeed!
13:04 < zorkian> the dev talks alternate timeslots so we'll have to make sure
      that the alternation maintains that so people can make it
13:05 < exor674> that way we also don't have to deal with special snowflake
      stuff on the hack box
13:05 < zorkian> although admittedly I may not be able to make the other
      timeslot very regularly
13:05 < Kareila> I've already advertised the next meeting as on a Friday night
      and for the benefit of those who can't come at this time of day
13:05 < Kareila> but after that, maybe?
13:06 < zorkian> alternately, maybe not mess with the dev talk schedule, and
      I'll just put up some "I will be doing some DW hacking at this time,
      please feel free to join".. because 9AM saturdays are definitely not
      a time I can hack very well heh
13:06 < Kareila> actually... that might work better on a signup-type thing
13:06 < Kareila> yeahm that
13:07 < rahaeli> i like that idea
13:07 < exor674> n rrrrr brb
13:07 < rahaeli> and maybe make it not just you doing that? like, anytime
      someone really wants to hack for a few hours they could post a "hack
      time!" call
13:07 < zorkian> that would be awesome
13:09 < Kareila> okay, let's experiment with that and see how it goes :)
13:09 < Kareila> anything else for the good of the order?
13:10 < Kareila> zorkian: before you disappear to Oliver-land, is there a time
      in the next few days or so we could chat?
13:10 < zorkian> sure, I'm actually around a lot on IRC, I just don't say much.
      but if you ping me I'll respond if I'm around.
13:10 < zorkian> and I'm on all workdays etc
13:10 < Kareila> okay, will do!
13:11 < Kareila> thanks for coming, everyone! I declare this meeting adjourned :)
13:12 < rahaeli> w00t!
13:12 < Afuna> Whoo!
13:12 -!- ChanServ changed the topic of #dreamwidth-dev to: Dreamwidth Studios
      (dreamwidth.org) --  development discussion. Grab a bug and start hacking!*
      || Next dev chat 2014-07-11 @ 22:00 EDT
13:13 < Kareila> and now, I quest for food.
13:13 < Sophira> Woot :D
13:14 < Sophira> And for anybody who didn't know, Fig has a countdown command
      that can be used to find out how far away a given time is:
13:14 < Sophira> fig, countdown 2014-07-11 22:00 EDT
13:14 < Fig-Bit> Countdown to Sat Jul 12 02:00:00 2014 GMT: 6 days, 7 hours,
      45 minutes, 35 seconds.
13:14 < louise_> Bye all!