Community: Contributor Experience Agenda

[gundalow]

Please leave a comment regarding any agenda item you wish to discuss. If you don't show up for the meeting, your item will be skipped.

If your IRC nick is different from your GitHub username, leave that as well.

Big Contributor Project Plan

See https://github.com/ansible/community/blob/master/meetings/README.md for the schedule

Once an item has been addressed it should get strike-though strike-though

When creating new agenda ensure contributor_experience and meeting_agenda labels are set

Meeting will be in #ansible-community on Freenode IRC

[gundalow]

Initial topics

• What metrics should we track so we can show progress
• Ansibullbot update: https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/ansibot
• New Contributor feedback https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/353

[gundalow]

Make it easier to find existing docs, identify gaps

Update index page of /community and /dev_guide so Contributors can find out existing docs.

For minimal effort we can guide people in the right direction.

Welcome your edits & comments via https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMevQ0W7MZgJA1tJrJbNHIhTiHYHYUlO3IHXBs_usGE/edit?ts=5be2cd87#

[paulvonderhaar]

Hey, I'm interested in helping development for this project, but I don't have any idea where to begin. Is there a particular place where I can find ongoing issues?

[gundalow]

@paulvonderhaar Hi,
I'd start with an area you already use with Ansible, and then look at

• label/small_patch
• https://ansible.sivel.net/pr/byfile.html
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/community/

[gundalow]

[Docs] How to review & test a PR #399

We need (clearer) instructions to so anyone knows how to review and test a PR.
Best type of review is from someone actually using it, rather than just looking at the code

https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/339

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMevQ0W7MZgJA1tJrJbNHIhTiHYHYUlO3IHXBs_usGE/edit?ts=5be2cd87#heading=h.kzxzqyez5fp5

[gundalow]

2018-11-08 Minutes

Purpose

• We define "contributor" as someone that does or should interact with PRs
• As discussed in Contributor Summit in Austin, we'd setup this new group, which I'm (gundalow) working on full time. We are (initially) focusing on PRs, though we are happy to fix other stuff as we go along. It's also expected that some of this work will also improve issues and help the community more generally.
• We are focusing on making it clear what and how to do things before looking for more reviewers, maintainers

Improving Docs: /community and /dev_guide

aka Helping new contributors figure out how to navigate our processes

Update for /community/ and /dev_guide/

WIP Document - updated & comments welcome

• Approach was liked
• Docs about deprecation are always difficult to find, this work helps that
• Lots of updates made to the doc
• Making people aware of updates/changes in the "right" way to do things is an issue
• Writing/reviewing code is only one way to be a contributor How to sell doing reviews - Need help with this

Better way to generate modules

• module-init proposal#49

[Docs] How to review & test a PR #399

WIP Document - updated & comments welcome

Before we can attract more reviewers we need to document:

• How people can review
• What we are looking for in reviews

See WIP Docs
for current draft. Needs a lot more detail, starting with how to get the code locally to test. Comments welcome in the doc

Actions

• acozine/gundalow to think about changelog for docs, test infrastructure, coding standards
• gundalow create issue for tracking ideas on how to motivate reviewers. credit people in changelog, points/badges/stars - watch out for people gaming the system
• gundalow needs to document his bigger picture plan (contributor workflow, why we are starting with docs before adding people. Why we improve the SIGs before adding people)
• gundalow to do walk though and document how to test a PR

Full logs

• Summary
• Chat logs

[webknjaz]

Moved to https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/401

[ssbarnea]

Can we do somethign about the DCO check that is currently enabled on ansible/molecule? It makes contributions a PITA, especially as there is no way to use templates when you create PRs using git web interface.

If it is possible to get rid of it would be great for the contrubutor experience https://github.com/ansible/molecule/issues/1548 --- or you can just add me to the team and I will shut up ;)

[ssbarnea]

Here is something to think about which I found over the last years about Ansible: because Ansible has a fast release cycle, most users are on an older version on Ansible and they prefer to implement local ugly workarounds for Ansible bugs because they would not be able to benefit from a bugfix anyway (or not in short term).

If ansible team would have a more related policy about backporting bugfixes to older versions it may be possible to have some extra incentices to improve the product.

Real life example: openstack teams are now using 2.5.x which receives only security fixes. Why would I spend considerable more extra time fixing a bug which I cannot benefit from? Yep, the team will migrate to newer version, but buy thet time this happens, it will again be security-fixes only.

PS. I have few other examples about people using now 2.4.x versions, in production!

[jamescassell]

2.4.x I've seen in prod because it comes in RHEL extras

[gundalow]

2018-11-15 Minutes

Improving Docs: /community and /dev_guide

aka Helping new contributors figure out how to navigate our processes

• Review and discussion around https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/48734, which was created based on plan from previous meeting.

Actions

• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/community/development_process.html refactor should include https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo/# etc for people that are new to GitHub

Full logs

• Summary
• Chat logs

[gundalow]

Modules' DOCUMENTATION.author have been checked and 250 modules updated to correctly state the author. CI now enforces the format author: Name (@handle), see https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/406 for background

[gundalow]

Details of the big PR review session taking place on Thursday 29th November, see https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/407 for details. Hope to see you there (add a comment if you plan to make it)

[gundalow]

No Contributor Experience Meeting today (Thursday 22nd).

Thursday 29th Nov will be the big all-day PR review - #407

[gundalow]

Topics for meeting in 40 minutes:

• Review of big PR review
• Cycle of upcoming PR review
• Updating docs
• How to guide new_contributors
• Ansibot Plan

[syncpak]

I am not sure this is the right IRC but here it goes: If we make a module and import the requests library (which is not installed by default) I understand it is frowned upon, but is it an automatic reason for rejection of the module into the project ? See you next Thursday.

[gundalow]

Topics for today's meeting:

• Webinar preparation How to Make Your Mark: Ansible Community Contributions Wed, Jan 30, 2018 9:30AM EST
  
  
  
  • How to attract new contributors
  
  
  • Showing community Progress
  
  
  • What do people need to know/motivate to get them contributing
  
  
  • Big PR review days
  
  
  • What other topics should we cover?
  
  
• New Working Groups
  
  
  
  • AIX
  
  
  • Solaris
  
  
• Thoughts on replacing Working Group email list page with dedicated page about Working groups
  
  
  
  • Describe the purpose of Working Groups
  
  
  • Better links and details of what they are doing
  
  
  • Link to docs on how to create a working group
  
  
• GitHub: General, Ansibullbot & Scaling issues #357

[gundalow]

Topics for Thursday's meeting

• Webinar preparation How to Make Your Mark: Ansible Community Contributions Wed, Jan 30, 2018 9:30AM EST
• Organise and publicize next Big PR review (mid Feb?) https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/407
• Update on Working Groups, inc Molecule All Working Groups
  
  
  
  • Need specific pages for WGs needed
  
  

[gundalow]

Help needed

It's generally agreed that Working Groups are the secret to scaling challanges with Ansible, so over the next few months I'd like us to focus on them.

Some initial thoughts:

• Do any of the WG (Working Groups) have anything blocking them?
• Is it clear how someone just starting out can help?
• Do we need to highlight label:$WG + label:bug items?
• Does each WG have some guidance/actions in how to increase test coverage
• If we heavily promoted the WG would it help or drown it?
• Would they benefit from a WG specific review day, like https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/407

What else?

Join us at 1900UTC Thursday to discuss this, or add comments in #ansible-community or on this GitHub issues.

[gundalow]

Ansible Fest: Contributors Summit

Just a reminder that Contributors Summit is happening on Monday 23rd September and will be streamed online and you can make your voice heard via IRC.

When is this in my timezone?

To see what we plan to discuss see the top level Agenda
From there you can see the various breakout sessions.
A lot of the morning session will be around Collections

Call to Action!

Even if you can only make a small part of the day, or maybe can't attend at all, there are still ways take part:

• Add your thoughts, ideas and questions to the Breakout Agenda
• Vote on what you'd like to be discussed (ie add +yourname)

Background Reading

A large part of Monday Morning will be around "Ansible Collections", to get up to speed on what the current thoughts are, the following links will help you:

Blog: Thoughts on restructuring the Ansible Project
Blog: The future of Ansible Content Delivery
Webinar: Collections and the future of how Ansible Content is handled
Docs: Collections Tech Preview Guide

NEW: Community Central (drop in space)

At AnsibleFest 2019 we are excited to launch Community Central, a gathering place and information hub for Ansible contributors. This takes place 10-3pm each day at AnsibeFest.

Community Central builds on the success of Ask an Expert, with a focus on contributors rather than users.

Community Central will host informal talks and coding sessions on the main conference days. Members of the Ansible Engineering team and the various Ansible Working Groups will be there.

It's a great place to discover how you can contribute to Ansible, meet other contributors, or polish your latest Ansible pull request. If you already contribute to Ansible, or would like to find out how to get involved, this is the place for you!

Feel free to come along and say hello, or even bring your laptop and we can help you through any part of the contributor or development process. Keep an eye on the Agenda Builder to see what's happening.

Questions?

Any questions, feel free to ping me

Email: [email protected]
Freenode: #ansible-community
Matrix: ansible-community
GitHub: @gundalow
Twitter: @the_gundalow