Discussion: Jenkins Core Maintainer/Developer discussion channels

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Oleg Nenashev

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Apr 8, 2020, 8:17:38 AM4/8/20
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Hi all,

In the Proposal: Expanding the Jenkins Core maintainers team thread we briefly discussed creation of chats and other communication channels for Jenkins core maintainers which could help in the case of runtime communications: merge/changelog discussions, sync-ups between maintainers, etc. Right now we mostly use pull requests and mailing lists for such kind of discussions, but a number of private messages between maintainers makes me tink that we might be lacking a chat for runtime discussions. Also, we could setup a regular call to discuss maintenance topics, do reviews in the screenshare mode and to do knowledge transfers about the codebase.

I would appreciate feedback from Jenkins core maintainers and active contributors:
  • Would a dedicated chat help us? E.g. jenkinsci/core-developers in Gitter
  • Would it make sense to have a regular or an on-demand call for core maintainers? 
Thanks for your time,
Oleg





Tim Jacomb

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Apr 8, 2020, 9:30:43 AM4/8/20
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I think a core-dev chat room would be useful,

I don’t think it needs limiting to just be core-developers though

Anything related to development on the core would be welcomed there

Thanks
Tim

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Marky Jackson

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Apr 8, 2020, 9:34:16 AM4/8/20
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+1 from me on a core-dev chat room. I do think we will have to make sure it is moderated in some fashion to prevent non-core-dev related questioning. I also think if this room is created there should be some type of banner stating that this channel expects that some basic debugging was done prior. This will prevent it from becoming a help-desk channel of sort.


Daniel Beck

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Apr 8, 2020, 9:50:54 AM4/8/20
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> On 8. Apr 2020, at 14:17, Oleg Nenashev <o.v.ne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> creation of chats and other communication channels for Jenkins core maintainers which could help in the case of runtime communications: merge/changelog discussions, sync-ups between maintainers, etc. Right now we mostly use pull requests and mailing lists for such kind of discussions, but a number of private messages between maintainers makes me tink that we might be lacking a chat for runtime discussions

I see this going in two ways:

- Core development related (and will probably pretty open)
- Core maintenance related (and can easily be limited to committers and the triage team)

It seems to me that there are already plenty of venues to discuss the former, and it's typically not time sensitive. OTOH, the latter needs (or can benefit from) closer coordination, especially towards end of the week, or before LTS schedule related dates.

I prefer we don't create yet another almost-general-purpose chat (what wrong with #jenkins and equivalents for general questions about core?), so for me, the latter seems more useful. A larger scope would also increase the volume of messages, which makes it less viable to have notifications enabled.

That said, I'm open to either (or both…), if the chosen approach doesn't work we can always change it. Given the relatively small group of people involved, it shouldn't be too difficult to change direction.

Tim Jacomb

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Apr 8, 2020, 10:36:32 AM4/8/20
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do you mean #jenkins on irc or gitter http://gitter.im/jenkinsci/jenkins ?

gitter jenkins is are very heavy user channel

irc jenkins isn't so bad but still lots of people after pipeline help.

On the kubernetes slack there's a few, <project>-users and <project>-dev channels
Which helps separate out the noise in my opinion.

But yeah open to both...

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Sladyn Nunes

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Apr 8, 2020, 3:15:33 PM4/8/20
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I would like to share my opinion as a  new contributer to the Jenkins core that it would be very helpful if there is a Jenkins core developers dedicated channel maybe on slack or any other convenient medium similar to the Jenkins-X project , because the jenkinsci/jenkins gitter channel is mostly filled with user queries and it could be possible that the discussion may get lost.
Also +1 to the on demand sync-ups for the core maintainers, maybe non maintainers can attend to learn more about the recent developments and learn from the maintainers.
Thanks and cheers. 

Matt Sicker

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Apr 8, 2020, 4:49:16 PM4/8/20
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I'm not a big fan of gitter myself as the client is fairly buggy and
limited compared to the alternatives. I'm even ok with IRC. We could
use some other chat as well like Slack as you suggested.
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Radek Antoniuk

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Apr 9, 2020, 4:31:21 AM4/9/20
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Definitely +1 for core channel, definitely -1 for gitter and +1 for Slack or some other alternative like Rocket.Chat:
I'd also love to have a channel for #infra.

Something on that:

Gavin Mogan

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Apr 9, 2020, 4:34:42 AM4/9/20
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Infra is on IRC.freenode.net #jenkins-infra

I've been using matrix for a few months now, so will be writing up a proposal real soon on centralizing on matrix cause right now everything is so spread out

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Daniel Beck

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Apr 9, 2020, 4:39:47 AM4/9/20
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> On 9. Apr 2020, at 10:31, Radek Antoniuk <radek.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd also love to have a channel for #infra.

Multiple references to #jenkins-infra on https://jenkins.io/projects/infrastructure/

Not intended that way, but still a great example what a major downside is when jumping on every chat software bandwagon, it makes it unnecessarily difficult to find things.

Radosław Antoniuk

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Apr 9, 2020, 4:55:47 AM4/9/20
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> I'd also love to have a channel for #infra.

Multiple references to #jenkins-infra on https://jenkins.io/projects/infrastructure/

Not intended that way, but still a great example what a major downside is when jumping on every chat software bandwagon, it makes it unnecessarily difficult to find things.

I fully agree Daniel.
I also think that IRC is so 30 years ago ;) - Gitter/Slack, JIRA Infra and dev mailing list should be enough and then if #core on Gitter then #infra also on Gitter.
Obviously, for Slack (or whatever) I meant a universal, autocreated channel layout for all github/<pluginId> or something along those lines.


Daniel Beck

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Apr 9, 2020, 5:35:44 AM4/9/20
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> On 9. Apr 2020, at 10:55, Radosław Antoniuk <radek.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Gitter/Slack, JIRA Infra and dev mailing list should be enough and then if #core on Gitter then #infra also on Gitter.

Didn't Gitter have problems maintaining the platform? Have those been resolved?

And Slack costs money unless we're prepared to lose history, and doesn't have useful moderation tools last time I checked.

TBH, I really don't understand the persistent IRC criticism. It's all in the client, which I at least have a choice of for IRC, as opposed to getting to choose between a shitty web UI and a shitty web UI in a standalone application.

Radosław Antoniuk

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Apr 9, 2020, 5:43:12 AM4/9/20
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Hey, I'm not critisizing! I just have my own preference and opinion :-)
You know, if IRC would be so great, Slack wouldn't exist. 
Indeed, between Gitter and IRC probably I'd choose IRC. Between Rocket.Chat and IRC (although I never used it), for my own startup, I am choosing Slack or Rocket.Chat, because of integrations and UI/mobile friendliness etc. It always boils down to TCO and needed feature-set.

Tim Jacomb

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Apr 9, 2020, 7:52:07 AM4/9/20
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There’s this project for a public archive of slack: 

We would need the equivalent for IRC as well I think.

With IRC currently there’s no public log of any of the Jenkins channels. Each person needs to log it then self or pay / run a service that will do it for them afaik



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Tim Jacomb

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Apr 9, 2020, 7:53:58 AM4/9/20
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Oleg Nenashev

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Apr 10, 2020, 7:06:05 PM4/10/20
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If we have archiving established, I do not mind trying out Slack. TBH if we use Slack for runtime communications only, even losing history is not a big deal. But I do not hold my breath about t, so history is needed IMHO.

My IMHO: Gitter is quite bad and not really maintained nowadays, IRC is a nightmare to use without a paid client.So indeed it leaves us with Slack or its open-source equivalents like Rocket chat or Mattermost. Slack is more convenient if we want to avoid hosting a service on Jenkins infra and if we want to make it easy for contributors to join. But no, I do not like Slack at all...wellp

I will abstain from voting on a specific chat platform and join the majority here unless Skype or WhatsApp are selected.

BR, Oleg

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:53:58 PM UTC+2, Tim Jacomb wrote:
On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 at 12:51, Tim Jacomb <timja...@gmail.com> wrote:
There’s this project for a public archive of slack: 

We would need the equivalent for IRC as well I think.

With IRC currently there’s no public log of any of the Jenkins channels. Each person needs to log it then self or pay / run a service that will do it for them afaik


On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 at 10:43, Radosław Antoniuk <radek....@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey, I'm not critisizing! I just have my own preference and opinion :-)
You know, if IRC would be so great, Slack wouldn't exist. 
Indeed, between Gitter and IRC probably I'd choose IRC. Between Rocket.Chat and IRC (although I never used it), for my own startup, I am choosing Slack or Rocket.Chat, because of integrations and UI/mobile friendliness etc. It always boils down to TCO and needed feature-set.

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Marky Jackson

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Apr 10, 2020, 7:08:39 PM4/10/20
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I am +1 on slack. Also feel gitter is a horrible experience but will not use rocketchat, whatsapps, or Skype

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Daniel Beck

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Apr 10, 2020, 8:08:32 PM4/10/20
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> On 11. Apr 2020, at 01:06, Oleg Nenashev <o.v.ne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> TBH if we use Slack for runtime communications only, even losing history is not a big deal

Strongly disagree. Even such conversations have a tendency to contain useful information, I'm not interested in having to keep a text editor open to save everything that'll be relevant in the future.

Jim Klimov

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Apr 11, 2020, 1:05:11 PM4/11/20
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FWIW, for IRC there is I believe logging at echelog.com (or is easy to arrange for that).

As a PC client, I use Pidgin - it is multiplatform, not-paid and quite usable. Misses collecting the messages from my offline though (probably any native IRC would) - that is where echelog helps when I for example expect replies to questions posted at end of my workday.

There are however concerns about a mobile client that would be easy to use and not eat all the battery and traffic allowance. During fosdem days I did subscribe to demo-time of this or that cloud-irc service and used it over browser; not sure if there is a full-time free equivalent. Full-time massive chats about code and work are logistically (copy-paste, kbd) easier on a laptop anyway.

My 2c, Jim
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Radosław Antoniuk

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Apr 11, 2020, 1:54:15 PM4/11/20
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I think it's also important then to discuss the role of the on-line communication tool.

For me, an on-line communication tool serves the purpose of almost-real-time discussion on various subjects, agree consensus and/or decide on stuff.
I do not think however it is the place to use as a documentation reference - in that sense every discussion holds "useful information" and having said that we should keep recordings of every Zoom meeting or anything else.
For that purpose, there are Google Docs and GitHub and Jenkins Mailing lists that hold agreements, documentation, change proposals and any kind of "useful documentation", in a versioned and organised manner.

For me the availability of on-line archive of online chats, whether it be IRC or Slack is not an argument for the tool, especially for the external communication - for internal communication of the core contributors, it might be different.

Having said that, there is an Architecture standard for solving such stuff (similar to JEPs) that could be used to drive such decisions:

Maybe we could prepare a fact and quality driven comparison of possible approaches to help agree whether a change is needed and valuable or not?


Happy and safe Easter to everyone!

Daniel Beck

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Apr 12, 2020, 2:49:35 PM4/12/20
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> On 11. Apr 2020, at 19:53, Radosław Antoniuk <radek.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For me the availability of on-line archive of online chats, whether it be IRC or Slack is not an argument for the tool, especially for the external communication - for internal communication of the core contributors, it might be different.


I've had quite a few situations in the past where I had to look up what seemed like an off-hand comment at the time that never made it into a 'proper' medium, especially when it was conversations with contributors with very limited availability (for example KK) or those who've moved on from the project. Logs are very useful for that.

So, yes, in theory chat message wouldn't need archiving, in practice there's often information that will be useful later.

Gavin Mogan

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Apr 12, 2020, 2:56:51 PM4/12/20
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I started https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F3Yj-X6y9SbdiQ1UX5aYEA3Z73rZMhw6WozvesvQ-QI/edit?usp=sharing yesterday to take some rough notes. My vote is still matrix!

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Vlad Silverman

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Apr 14, 2020, 3:57:47 PM4/14/20
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I also think that mattermost is a reasonable chat solution for devops teams - https://github.com/mattermost.  Besides results of comparing mattermost and slack are pretty obvious - https://mattermost.com/mattermost-vs-slack/ :-)
Just my 2c

Thx, Vlad

Oleg Nenashev

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Apr 28, 2020, 9:01:17 AM4/28/20
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Hi all,

Just a heads-up I occasionally created a "#jenkins-release" channel on Freenode. Until we have a better decision in this thread, I suggest using this channel for runtime communications between the Jenkins release team and contributors who want to join. Final solution is still up for a discussion.

Pull request which adds the channel to the maintainer guide: https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/pull/4691

BR, Oleg

Sladyn Nunes

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May 30, 2020, 12:33:49 PM5/30/20
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Another aspect that could be explored is having a sort of mentorship kind of a programme/channel . Just like the Linux kernel has a kernel mentorship program to coach new developers into contributing to the core, maybe we could have Jenkins core-mentorship coaching more new developers into contributing to the core and making it better.
Cheers.

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Oleg Nenashev

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May 30, 2020, 1:44:38 PM5/30/20
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I would be happy to do that. We have already established an onboarding process, and there was a proposal in thus thread to have regular meetings to do knowledge transfers. It got lost in the chat discussions

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Tim Jacomb

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Jul 16, 2020, 4:05:57 PM7/16/20
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Hi

Any thoughts on Zulip?

They have an open source sponsorship for their cloud version:

There's a server you can try it out on here:

Google, GitHub etc are all supported for auth to.

Thanks
Tim


Oleg Nenashev

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Sep 30, 2020, 9:48:21 AM9/30/20
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To make Gavin happy, GitLab handed over Gitter to Element. Element plans to gradually make Gitter "just" a client for matrix.
Good times. If done properly, it would definitely help to address many concerns about Gitter.

Best regards,
Oleg

Gavin Mogan

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Sep 30, 2020, 1:59:11 PM9/30/20
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Awww I'm so happy they care so much about me

But that's actually really awesome news. Gitter was a really good idea that was never completed. 


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