Subplot → blog → 2022 → 02 → 26 → Iteration planning: February 27 – March 12
  1. Assessment of the iteration that has ended
  2. Discussion and decisions
    1. Moving meeting agenda items to the issue tracker.
    2. Scheduling the main repository CI job
    3. Getting Subplot into Debian
    4. Release plan for this iteration
    5. Review of the whole code base of Subplot
    6. Reaching out for feedback
    7. A media repository
    8. Convincing others to try Subplot
    9. Blog post
    10. Subplot documentation
  3. Repository review
    1. The subplot repository
    2. The subplot-web repository
    3. The subplot-container-images repository
  4. New iteration
    1. Current goal (not changed this iteration)
    2. Issues for this iteration
  5. Actions
  6. Meeting participants

Assessment of the iteration that has ended

The following issues were picked for the previous iteration:

  • Subplot issue 133 – No feature table comparing scenario runners from different codegen templates
    • Daniel completed this.
  • Subplot issue 269 – ./check should set a template when running docgen
    • Daniel completed this.
  • Subplot issue 221 – Command line tool has insufficient logging
    • Lars made no progress and is blocked on understanding tracing crate.
  • Subplot issue 248 – In Rust runcmd, write exit, stdout and especially stderr upon failure
    • Lars made no progress and is blocked on understanding tracing crate.

Additionally, the following actions were decided on:

  • Daniel is to prepare an MR about the talk for subplot-web
    • This didn’t happen.
  • Lars is to deal with the webserver changes needed for subplot.tech
    • Done: the old site now redirects all URLs to new site.
  • Lars will write an MR for the website change for subplot-web
    • Done: The new site doesn’t link to the old site, except in old blog posts, which aren’t worth changing.

Furthermore, we did this:

  • Lars changed the subplot-container-images repository to trigger a build automatically on Friday evenings. This saves us from having to remember to do that manually every meeting.

Overall, we made a some progress, which is all we demand from ourselves on a hobby project.

Discussion and decisions

Moving meeting agenda items to the issue tracker.

Lars proposed a new order of topics in the agenda, and that we move recurring discussion topics to the issue tracker. This should let us avoid copying items from meeting note to meeting note. Daniel agreed, so we did that during the meeting.

We created a label recurring-agenda-item. We created or labelled issues:

Scheduling the main repository CI job

We discussed whether it might be worth making the CI job for the main repository also run on schedule, maybe an hour after the container image one. We decided it’d be worth doing. Lars did that: the schedule is that it happens on Saturday now well in advance of the bi-weekly Subplot meeting.

Getting Subplot into Debian

Subplot issue 119 covers this. We added the following comment:

We should investigate what is missing from Debian which we depend upon, and decide if we can either mitigate that dependency, or would need to ask for that to be packaged as well. Perhaps we can investigate if there’s a way to automate the detection of missing dependencies such that we could have a pipeline job which ran on main to tell us the state of play.

We are not yet ready to file an RFP bug to get Subplot packaged for Debian. It will happen after we think we won’t be making breaking changes anymore. We probably want to do a review of the dependencies as well, to make packaging easier.

Release plan for this iteration

We plan on making the next release after the current goal is done, and then make a release pretty much every iteration. We’ve gotten badly out of habit of making releases.

Review of the whole code base of Subplot

We created Subplot issue 273, and don’t plan to do anything about this until after goal 3 is done.

Reaching out for feedback

We won’t be reaching out for feedback until goal 3 is done. We didn’t open issue for this, to avoid naming people in public.

A media repository

Regarding the media repository question - we believe this is premature at this point. We’ve removed this from the agenda. We’ll make a repository when there’s a need. Until then there’s no need to keep discussing it.

Convincing others to try Subplot

We had an issue for this, but it’s now closed. We dropped this from the agenda.

Blog post

We decided to blog about the FOSDEM talk, the new domain, and the new Matrix room.

Subplot documentation

We discussed Subplot documentation and opened Subplot issue 274.

Repository review

We reviewed the open issues, merge requests, and CI pipelines for all the projects in the Obnam group on gitlab.com.

The subplot repository

There were 58 open issues, of which 28 were not tagged someday-maybe. We reviewed the ones that had been updated since the previous meeting, and made the following changes:

  • Subplot issue 270 – Test
    • deleted, was a test issue
  • Subplot issue 250 – subplotlib could do with unit tests
    • the new MR from Daniel fixes some of this; we will review the situation after that is merged
  • Subplot issue 214 – Lacks example and docs for using Rust step functions
    • Daniel will do an example
  • Subplot issue 271 – subplotlib should be reviewed for inclusion of attributes such as #[must_use]
    • created as a split-off issue from 263, put into current goal
    • Daniel will review
  • Subplot issue 263 – What is a good way to include Rust step functions in the crate, when testing a program written in Rust?
    • removed from goal 2
    • we will review this after the current goal

There was one open merge request:

  • Subplot merge request 250 – (subplotlib): Improve step library documentation
    • Daniel opened this just before the meeting, Lars will review it soon

There were open, old branches:

  • fix-133 – had been merged, was now deleted manually
  • subplot-rust – kept until the current goal is finished
  • docgen-cmark – kept until the next goal is finished

CI pipelines are OK.

The subplot-web repository

There were no open issues, no open merge requests, no extra branches, and no CI enabled.

The subplot-container-images repository

There was one open issue.

  • subplot-container-images #2 – There is no Docker image for using Subplot
    • we’re not going to work on this until we stop making breaking changes

There were no open merge requests, no extra branches, and the latest run of CI was successful. (That’s the run that was automatically triggered yesterday.)

New iteration

Current goal (not changed this iteration)

The current development goal is:

Subplot provides a set of libraries with identical capabilities in each of the supported languages. Python remains a supported language. Rust is promoted to supported-language status. Subplot will be tested with all supported languages. In addition, any quality of life improvements which can be done shall be done. This goal will be considered complete when a release of Subplot has been made with the unified language handling support complete.

This is represented as label goal:2 in the GitLab.com issue tracker.

Issues for this iteration

We collect issues for this iteration in Subplot milestone 45. We decided to not make a release.

Lars intends to work on:

Daniel intends to work on:

  • Subplot issue 214 – Lacks example and docs for using Rust step functions
  • Subplot issue 271 – subplotlib should be reviewed for inclusion of attributes such as #[must_use]

Actions

  • Lars and Daniel to blog about the FOSDEM talk, the new domain, and the new Matrix room.

Meeting participants

  • Daniel Silverstone
  • Lars Wirzenius