Assessment of the iteration that has ended

The previous iteration was Subplot milestone 10

Actions from the previous meeting:

• DONE: Lars to produce a list of dependencies of Subplot, for subplot#119.
  • There are six direct-dependency crates entirely missing
  • Many insufficent versions which are not listed in the issue for now

We have made several small changes during this iteration, though we did not complete the planned release. Fortunately things came up in this iteration which means it was a good thing as we’d otherwise have to do another release now.

We’re getting even closer to reaching the current goal. This feels good.

Discussion

The gitlab.com hosting situation

We reviewed the billing page for Subplot on gitlab.com. It all looks OK.

We will review the billing page every iteration or two.

Repository review

We reviewed issues (see below) and MRs. We made the decision to keep the reference test MR open until the release process during the next iteration.

We also checked in on CI pipelines for all the projects in the Subplot group on gitlab.com.

The open MR in the subplot repository (Subplot merge request 333) is related to reference.md

Extra branches: none.

Recurring items issues

There are some issues tagged recurring-agenda-item in the issue tracker, which we discuss in every iteration meeting.

• subplot#119 – Subplot is in not in Debian unstable
  • we have updated the issue with the current not-yet-packaged list of direct dependencies. No more action expected at this time.

What’s remaining for current goal?

We can re-enable reference.md, and then make a release. When we do, we should see if we can use GitLab CI to build an executable binary of the release.

There is an optional task to split subplot.md into multiple files (subplot#235), which may involve rewriting some of it using what we’ve learned about writing good subplots. However, that is a large task, and may need to be postponed, or splitting it into smaller tasks.

Lars raised an issue regarding running subplot docgen foo/bar.subplot not finding markdown documents properly. subplot#324 needs resolving before we make the release for this goal.

Goals

Goal 3: Current goal

Subplot is altered to treat a YAML document as the root of any subplot document, permitting multiple markdown files to be joined into a single scenario set or output document. We remove our dependency on Pandoc’s AST for internal document representation, and support a better range of document metadata as a result. We will use marked data types where possible to permit better provenance information in error and warning messages; and we will strive to reenable the reference tests such that we can make a statement to the effect that post goal 3, we do not intend to make further breaking changes to the input formats or primary behaviours of Subplot.

(Related issues on gitlab)

Goal 4: Planned

This goal is very likely to change. It will need to be discussed in depth when we finish the previous goal.

We’ll improve documentation and generally aim at making Subplot more plausibly usable by people outside of the Subplot project.

(Related issues on gitlab)

Plan for new iteration

Issues

We did an issue review for all non-someday-maybe issues with a view to setting up the goal label for final action this iteration.

• subplot#96 Error for “no not understand binding”…
  • We removed this from iteration planning because we’re not sure when we can get to it - it’s not important enough for goal 3.
• container#2 There is no Docker image for using Subplot
  • We decided to close this as a preferable approach will be a single binary release method.
• subplot#235 The Subplot subplot subplot.md is too long
  • We agreed to remove this from the iteration planning, and move it from goal 3 to goal 4.
  • This is likely to be a more complex thing than just splitting up the document and we want more time to think.
• subplot#263 What is a good way to include Rust step…
  • We put this tentatively into goal 4.
• subplot#268 Reenable reference.md
  • We agreed this should be in this iteration and Lars will continue to be responsible for it.
• subplot#287 Needs documentation for Rust step functions…
  • We put this tentatively into goal 4.
• web#4 Review FAQ
  • We removed this from its iteration and unassigned Daniel
• subplot#292 Tutorial example is not tested by ./check
  • We added goal 4 label
• subplot#308 Allow continuing commands across linebreaks
  • We had already selected mail style (indentation)
  • We discussed and didn’t want to add support for this in goal 3
  • Since mail style could be a breaking change though, Lars prepared subplot#325 which is in the goal and iteration to ban indented scenario steps, this way mail style won’t be a breaking change when we introduce it in a later goal.
• subplot#319 subplot.tech has broken links to examples
  • Updated to this iteration, left assigned to Lars
• subplot#320 Doesn’t verify bindings files very well
  • We agreed that even though fixing this would result in not accepting broken bindings we previously didn’t error on, this is not a breaking change since those bindings wouldn’t have worked anyway.
  • We put this into goal 4
• subplot#321 Lacks a library reference manual
  • We put this into goal 4
• subplot#322 Subplot should warn if code block…
  • We agreed this is important, and that Daniel will have a go in this iteration
• subplot#323 Make release to mark end of goal 3
  • Brought this into this iteration
• subplot#324 Can’t process subplot documents that are…
  • Lars has self-assigned and put this into this iteration
  • We agreed it was an mtime detection problem in docgen.
  • We root-caused that to the markdown_filenames from the subplot metadata and decided on a fix.
  • Lars will make a MR with the fix and a scenario to ensure this doesn’t recur.

We think we can finish goal 3 this iteration. We intend to work on the following issues (Subplot milestone 11).

• subplot#325 Scenario steps may not be indented
• subplot#324 Can’t process subplot documents that are in…
• subplot#323 Make release to mark end of goal 3
• subplot#322 Subplot should warn if code block…
• subplot#319 subplot.tech has broken links…
• subplot#268 Re-enable reference.md

Actions

No additional actions this time.

Meeting participants

• Daniel Silverstone
• Lars Wirzenius