[Buildbot-devel] Notes from the summit

[Gav...]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dustin J. Mitchell [mailto:dustin at v.igoro.us]
> Sent: Saturday, 18 December 2010 6:18 PM
> To: buildbot-devel list
> Subject: [Buildbot-devel] Notes from the summit
> 
> Today we held the second Buildbot summit at Mozilla HQ.  Thank you to
> the folks who made it out, and who called in.  We had a lively
> discussion, and I certainly learned a lot and will make some
> adjustments to my plans based on what I heard today.  In no particular
> order, attendees were Bear, Brian Warner, Amber Yust, Axel Hecht,
> William Siegrist, Nicolas Sylvain, Rishi Verma, and Daniel Dunbar.  At
> Tom Prince was on the phone, and perhaps others.
> 
> I've made some notes, and added them to the end of this page:
>   http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/Meeting17December2010
> 
> As the management types say, my door is always open, so if you've
> thoughts on any of the items there - either on the agenda or in my
> notes - please let me know privately or publicly.

Ok, thanks for the notes, here are some suggestions which should help
users, developers and maintainers like yourself recognise and encourage
developers.

1. YAML. Last year I persuaded you guys to separate commits into a new list.
   I also asked for a users list, though I didn't push it. Now I would
   recommend is a good time. Reasons:

	a. Traffic - there is sufficient traffic on the devel list to
warrant
	   splitting users emails from developers.

	b. Users are non too comfortable wading in with their seemingly
simple
	   question amongst the plethora of dev work going on. Therefore
user
	   questions should be separated. Developers who want to continue to

	   help users with their questions will be encouraged to join this
	   new list also.

	c. With User questions separated, it makes it easier to see who the
	   developers are and what they are working on, those developers
that
	   are not interested in user discussion or help can concentrate on
	   developing without distraction. Note - by developer here I mean
	   those working on Buildbot code. Many of our 'Users' of course are
	   developers in their own right :)

2. Website. I'll be blunt, I don't like Trac - at least not as a website, it
   is useful as a wiki of course but (as part of my next suggestion) in
order
   to have more committer type documentation , enticing look and feel etc, I
   think a proper website is on order. This could be a CMS - but I think we 
   should probably just go with creating web pages in (x)html , have the
source
   to the website in git so others can also contribute to that.
	As Dustin mentioned in a previous email, branding is key also, the
website
   will need to be similar looking to Trac - so need to alter that too so it
looks
   better. A nice flowing , easy to navigate website with good developer
documentation
   will also help bring more help to the project.

3. More Documentation - and I don't mean on how to use Buildbot , I mean
more
   developer documentation, how to get involved, what is a committer, who we
are (
   a list of voted in committers), roles - release manager, core
maintainers, admins,
   etc.. There are a sparse few scatterings buried in Trac, like how to
submit a
   patch is buried as a link on a page - this sort of stuff needs bringing
out in
   the open into a central developer area - ideally on the new website
proposed
   above. :)

That'll do for now. There is much I haven't even touched on from your
meeting, 
but hope this gets you started.

Of course, 1 is easy, either create a new list or not. If you decide to go
with
2 and 3 , of course I will volunteer to get that going.

Gav...


> 
> Dustin
> 
> P.S. there are only two 0.8.3 bugs remaining, so a 0.8.3 release is
> imminent - perhaps Monday, if my weekend travel goes smoothly.
> 
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