Meeting Notes Feb 20
Bron Gondwana
brong at fastmail.fm
Fri Feb 20 04:50:03 EST 2015
We held the meeting in appear.in/cyrus (which didn't work so well) and then later in Google Hangouts, which was better. Side channel was IRC.
The entire IRC log for the session is pasted below. I'll summarise it here:
My agenda/notes that I came into the meeting with:
* Welcome
* Meeting times?
* 2.5 / 3.0 - timelines
* Cyrus SASL?
* Infrastructure
* Docs
* Tasks
* the email from Dec 25th last year with outline of long-term goals in my head for Cyrus IMAPd.
Welcome:
* Thanks everyone! Really great to have so many people involved
Meeting times :
* we need to include US East, Europe and Melbourne. For now, it looks like early US and late Aus might work best for Ellie and Bron's family will have to lump it! We'll see how that works out. Might do one early, one late so we have different times of day for people.
* Plan at the moment is Monday Night/Friday morning Melbourne time.
Timeline:
* 2.5 March 1st
* 3.0 alpha May 1st
* 3.0 release July 20th.
* Agressive, but doable with the people we have at hand. Yay us.
Cyrus SASL:
* We want to include it under this umbrella. It needs a champion.
Infrastructure:
* Jenkins - ci.cyrusimap.org - need to get it work again and following key branches
* Other test framework? Package builds/architectures supported. Non-Intel will need to find someone to provide hardware.
* Website - outdated and not designed with use-cases of the people likely to arrive as the key thing. Needs love.
* Will keep using CMU mailing lists, they are known, work well, and are already archived by search engines.
* Task management - Jeroen to investigate Phabricator - http://phabricator.org/
* Wiki/discussions? Etherpad is quite popular right now, both CalConnect and Mozilla use it. Maybe we should too.
* The final canonical source will always be things posted to the mailing list, because (a) we're email people, and (b) everyone gets an immutable copy.
Docs:
* We really need better documentation.
ASIDE: My "grand vision" is for Cyrus to be easy to install and run by someone who isn't already a Cyrus expert. Our tech is great, but our docs aren't. We need to fix some of the technical things to make it easier to run, but we also need great docs, both the website and distributed with the code. It should be apt-get install/yum install => working IMAP server. Even docker/VMs.
* Anthony knows a tech writer in Toronto who is good and may be looking for work.
* Jeroen has access to Kolab writers in Czech.
* We have Jeroen and ^Simon^ already working on documentation.
* Somebody needs to take overall responsibility for the shape of the documentation, the tooling, and the website. This may be one of the mentioned people above, or someone else. We will decide soon.
ASIDE: My planned management style for this project is to have a people take ownership for each area that needs work. The entire group (in these meetings) is responsible for agreeing on overall goals and re-assessing them based on our actual progress over time. The individual area owners are responsible for either doing the necessary work, or finding someone else to do it for them.
Tasks:
* referring mainly to my email on Dec 25th, 2014. Tons of stuff we want to do.
* For Cyrus 2.5 - next week:
- Bron - replication protocol
- Ellie - upgrade path testing
- Chris - Jenkins - get it testing with existing Cassandane
* Long sidebar about how a bunch of people hate Perl and think that tests written in Perl are unmaintainable. Crybabies. I don't particularly care what language they are written in, so long as they are usable and test the right things.
* There's an imaptest engine from Dovecot that we should wrap and use as well.
* For Cyrus 3.0 - we need to prioritise from the list:
1) standards support
2) new features
3) regressions/bugs
* Support roles - documentation, QA (we have Chris a bit - maybe we want someone else as well?)
* standards - there has been some great work on sieve support from a couple of sources. We just need to integrate it.
* SASL - someone needs to take responsibility
* Test infrastructure and task management system is needed to keep track of what's being worked on.
ACTIONS:
* Ken to keep working on CardDAV/CalDAV with a goal for 3.0 having great support for both
* Anthony to look into QA and Tech Writer options he knows
* Jeroen to look at setting up phabricator and other infrastructure for the project
* Bron to get replication for 2.5 ready and release alpha
* Ellie to keep working on testbeds and learning her way around the code
NEXT MEETING:
* Monday 11pm Melbourne time (7am US East Coast, 1pm Europe)
IRC log (awful formatting 'r' us)
bron> ok, I'm here
kanari> good for you
kanari> how's the audio?
1rob21 well bron sounds like bron
^Simon> audio isn't too bad.
achow> i'm sure there is a Monty Pthon skit in that statment
bron> I can hear Ken fine
kanari> room is too crowded
^Simon> who is who?
bron> roll call ;)
1bron21 Bron and Ellie in the FastMail boardroom
kanari> who can pop out to let me back in?
rob> kanarip: I'm out, go for it
tibbs|> I just left as well.
bron> thanks robn
kanari> got it, thanks robn
achow> URL?
rob> I'm just a nosey fastmailer, don't need to be there :)
rob> achowe: https://appear.in/cyrus
kanari> are you guys still ok on the audio though?
^Simon> I'm someone with no video and no audio :)
bron> cool ^Simon^ :) Welcome
achow> Says Sorry the room is too crowded
^Simon> achowe - I'll logout if you want to participate
bron> First point - technology for future meetings?
bron> suggestions that scale better?
tibbs|> Hangouts, probably.
^Simon> skype (maybe)
kanari> yes, google talk
tibbs|> Skype, but... OS support not terribly good.
kanari> google talk/hangouts
bron> OK
achow> voice only VoIP phone bridge
bron> sounds like one of those
kanari> no need to be a freeby treehugger about it ;-)
bron> I will put it on my list for next time
tibbs|> Plain old conference call?
bron> timelines as per email
bron> March 1st 2.5
bron> May 1st 3.0 alpha
bron> July 20 30 release
bron> agressive but probably doable
kanari> +1
kanari> !
kanari> what (hopefully limited) features do we seek to include in 3.0?
bron> SASL
bron> if we can incorporate it, that would be great
bron> but need someone to champion it
bron> sorry, whoever that is
bron> it's too choppy to hear
achow> "broken and stupid"
kanari> i agree it is way too choppy, i haven't heard anyone for over a minute
achow> all static
achow> what planet we one?
achow> we on?
bron> kanarip: are you still in?
bron> do you want to talk about infrastructure
bron> that's the next point
kanari> no, there's nothing about any of it in appear.in that i could either hear, follow or contribute to
kanari> as in, i'm not in any longer
achow> i left the room
bron> kanarip: we're talking about etherpad
bron> for sharing thoughts/discussions/minutes
achow> google doc?
bron> kmurchison has good experience in the Calconnect world with it
kanari> beta.etherpad.ca
bron> and Mozilla use it a lot
kanari> crap, where was it
bron> server not found for me
kanari> https://beta.etherpad.org/
bron> let's say "will look into that"
bron> testing: ci server
bron> have asked Chris from FastMail to look into getting jenkins back working/stable
kanari> don't tell me appear.in is actually working for all of you though?
achow> I;ve used google doc to share info and it has revision history
bron> kanarip: no, it's shit
bron> achowe: OK
bron> let's choose one of those :)
bron> I think we all have Google accounts
bron> everyone is kinda forced to for at least testing :)
achow> give something new for my tablet to play with
1^Simon21 kanarip - I can hear bron fine
bron> mailing list will still be communication hub
kanari> yes, let's move to a hangout of sorts or sth.
achow> sith?
bron> do we want to try that now?
bron> the hangout?
^Simon> achowe - sth = something
achow> sure
bron> someone want to set it up?
kanari> we have to find out something that scales one way or the other, no?
9* 19ohamada_ (~ohamada at 2a00:1028:96ca:39d6:5e51:4fff:fe7a:7c86) has joined #cyrus
9* 19nic_ (~nic at CPE-65-29-170-255.wi.res.rr.com) has joined #cyrus
kanari> https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/g4xnqjjb5zvomzeb4kqvja3fz4a?hl=en
3* 23ohamada has quit (23Read error: Connection reset by peer23)
kanari> if that is even the address one is supposed to use...
3* 23nic_ has quit (23Client Quit23)
kanari> nope
kanari> i keep getting an install plugin dialog even after i've installed the plugin
^Simon> it's asking to install a plugin...
protagonis> try it in chrome, haha
dhoffen>i'm already in
dhoffen>maybe cause i've used it before back in the days i guess
bron> I'm in
achow> so who's hangout?
bron> I'm in the hangout that kanarip posted
bron> technology is sucking again
bron> let's keep talking here
bron> so Docs
bron> it's our major failing
protagonis> I'm in the hangout too
bron> I guess I should talk grand sweeping vision for a bit
1protagonis21 hey, i can see brong even!
kanari> now i'm in
bron> major goal is to make Cyrus usable/good for people who aren't already Cyrus experts
^Simon> my laptop is struggling with the video ;)
bron> and I want it to be easy to run
bron> manage
bron> backup
bron> link to existing auth systems
bron> etc
3* 23ribx has quit (23Ping timeout: 240 seconds23)
^Simon> I'm listening.
9* 19deuterium (~deuterium at 212-51-155-123.fiber7.init7.net) has joined #cyrus
bron> ^Simon^: do you have anything to add on docs?
bron> notes: were talking about Docs. Jeroen and ^Simon^ have a starting point on docs
bron> need a tech writer
bron> potentially someone in Toronto, or Jeroen knows people
^Simon> Nothing to add really, but I'm happy to take contributions and add them to what we have
bron> thanks
bron> we need someone to talk overall responsibility for docs
^Simon> direction for adding to the docs is important definitely.. there's too much to just fix in one go.
9* 19nic_ (~smuxi at CPE-65-29-170-255.wi.res.rr.com) has joined #cyrus
^Simon> yes.
^Simon> http://www.leaky.org/cyrus/guide/admin/twofive-newfeatures.html
bron> for 2.5, doc goal is just to cover upgrades
protagonis> those docs will be easy
bron> goal: yum/apt-get/emerge cyrus-imapd and you are ready to use IMAP
bron> that's it
protagonis> apt-get install!
protagonis> EOF
bron> OK
bron> so we're done here then, right?
bron> infrastructure: web presence
bron> website was revamped 3-4 years ago, but not necessarily up to par
bron> in terms of usability
bron> documentation comes from HTML in git repo, SCPed over
bron> marketting stuff - facebook/twitter/etc
bron> link to new news item
bron> bugzilla isn't necessarily the right tool
bron> need to deliberate process moving forward
bron> something more like a commercial product type of blurb?
protagonis> I dunno, the front page has prominent download links, documentation links, "What is Cyrus?", and News
bron> branding company in the UK which revamped Kolab website
protagonis> we are talking about http://www.cyrusimap.org/ right?
bron> yes
bron> could look for professional marketting, or have this fall under the tech writer role
bron> Kolab have marketting people on the payroll too
bron> frontpage: lean, mean and to the point
^Simon> for easy-to-use, the "download" part of the website should perhaps suggest using one of the distribution packages (as long as they're up to date) rather than downloading and compiling the source.
bron> absolutely
bron> we should be building distro packages ourselves
bron> including nightlies
nic> yes to building packages ourselves.
bron> we should be catering to the consumers - say better that Dovecot/Exchange/etc...
bron> website/wiki/issue tracking
^Simon> time based releases a bit like centos 7? 7.1406 or whatever it is with the 1406 being the year/month it was released?
achow> JIRA for ticket tracking https://www.atlassian.com/
^Simon> isn't JIRA really resource intensive?
bron> ^Simon^: we had hosted JIRA
bron> on their servers
bron> it took 30 seconds to generate the main page
tibbs|> ^Simon^: Are you Simon Matter?
^Simon> No.
tibbs|> Seemed a reasonable guess.
bron> tasks for everyone for 2.5
1bron21 Bron - replication protocol
bron> Ellie - upgrade path testing
bron> Chris - Jenkins
1kanari21 brong, is saying the replication protocol for 2.5 needs to be amended to include per-message annotations
bron> QA professional - Anthony knows somebody
bron> check lists of distributions we're willing to look after
bron> NetBSD ;)
1bron21 Bron - work out which tests are failing and why
^Simon> nothing wrong with perl :)
^Simon> python?
bron> test suite
bron> perl/python/ruby - whatever
bron> I don't care too much
tibbs|> Whoever does the work picks the language?
kanari> +1 ;-)
tibbs|> I would just remove what you want to remove in 3.0 without adding anything.
3* 23nic_ has quit (23Ping timeout: 245 seconds23)
bron> major breakage - UnixHS always on
tibbs|> Yes, in what way do things actually break?
bron> it means all the folder names change for everyone
tibbs|> Unless you have unixhierarchysep: 1 altnamespace: 1, I guess.
protagonis> we have unixhierarchysep:0 here...
tibbs|> I have both set to 1, because it seemed to make the most sense to me.
^Simon> we have unixHS: 1, but altnamespace is whatever the default is.
^Simon> anything that doesn't cause our users to get confused would be ok :)
bron> 3 major buckets of work
bron> 1) standards support
bron> 2) new features
bron> 3) bug fixes/regressions
tibbs|> Looks like I got lucky.
^Simon> cyberpear = James Cassell?
tibbs|> That is what my nicklist shows.
bron> thanks James for the variables/imap4flags :)
bron> we need to make a list of exactly what we want to support
^Simon> the dovecot docs might have a list of rfcs they support?
9* 19nic_ (~smuxi at CPE-65-29-170-255.wi.res.rr.com) has joined #cyrus
^Simon> presumably cyrus should implement most of those
bron> yeah, imapwiki has some good stuff
bron> and I did some work a while back
^Simon> GTUBE and EICAR
^Simon> that's down to the MTA surely.
^Simon> exim/postfix/etc
3* 23ohamada_ has quit (23Quit: Leaving23)
^Simon> the documentation should have some examples of how to hook it into various MTAs via lmtpd etc
tibbs|> I have been ordered by legal to delete messages from all user mailboxes.
tibbs|> But, yeah, scanning things after the fact is useful. But then, can't you just use the imap protocol to do all of that?
bron> tibbs|w: you can if you can proxy auth
tibbs|> Well, connect as admin so you can see the entire folder hierarchy.
bron> ^Simon^: definitely should have docs for how to hook up
bron> yep
bron> that works too
tibbs|> But yeah, I use proxy auth for some of these things.
^Simon> cyrus-imapd cyrus-imapd-docs cyrus-imapd-xapian ?
^Simon> separate packages to add in other functions
1rob21 brong: xapian snippet patches still need to go upstream
bron> yeah, xapian snippet patches
tibbs|> I thought a lot of webmail systems did that.
nic> Several distros seem to prefer to separate packages into functionality groups (i.e. Debian) but this can create extra documentation overhead
3* 23kanarip has quit (23Read error: error:1408F119:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_RECORD:decryption failed or bad record mac23)
tibbs|> Oh, yes.
9* 19kanarip (~vanmeeuwe at 2a02:120b:c3f8:5720:12c3:7bff:fe9d:e4c8) has joined #cyrus
bron> Kolab has tooling for importing from various files into IMAP
tibbs|> Being able to do proper backups would make doing cyrus version updates far less pucker-intensive.
tibbs|> We use whenisgood.net for this kind of thing.
^Simon> how "middle of day" for UTC?
kanari> right about precisely mid day
nic> what is Google+ hangout URI for this?
tibbs|> https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/g4xnqjjb5zvomzeb4kqvja3fz4a?hl=en
kanari> nic_, we're just about wrapping up though
dhoffen>have a good night. I'm just a visitor/user anyway :)
kanari> thanks dhoffend
dhoffen>done enough ptclient bughunting for this night :/ very strange stuff :-)
bron> and we're done :)
kanari> excellent meeting...
bron> it's not going to be an hour and a half next time!
achow> hangout worked out really well
bron> yep
tibbs|> Well that was interesting.
kanari> ran over time just by the amount one would expect for a first meeting ;-)
bron> I'll be actively killed if I'm up that late
bron> :)
--
Bron Gondwana
brong at fastmail.fm
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