18:00:11 #startmeeting Ansible Community Meeting 18:00:11 Meeting started Wed Jul 7 18:00:11 2021 UTC. 18:00:11 This meeting is logged and archived in a public location. 18:00:11 The chair is felixfontein. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 18:00:11 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 18:00:11 The meeting name has been set to 'ansible_community_meeting' 18:00:11 #topic Agenda https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/539 18:00:11 abadger1999 acozine andersson007_ baptistemm bcoca briantist cyberpear cybette dericcrago dmsimard felixfontein geerlingguy gundalow gwmngilfen ikhan_ jillr jtanner lmodemal misc nitzmahone resmo samccann tadeboro cidrblock thaumos zbr: ping! 18:00:12 o/ 18:00:15 o/ 18:00:15 #info Agenda: https://github.com/ansible/community/issues/539 / Topics: https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics 18:00:18 o/ 18:00:18 #chair gundalow tadeboro 18:00:18 Current chairs: felixfontein gundalow tadeboro 18:00:26 o/ 18:00:28 #chair briantist jillr 18:00:28 Current chairs: briantist felixfontein gundalow jillr tadeboro 18:00:36 * dericcrago waves 18:00:44 o/ 18:00:47 Good day 18:00:50 #chair dericcrago cyberpear abadger1999 18:00:50 Current chairs: abadger1999 briantist cyberpear dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr tadeboro 18:01:23 o/ 18:01:35 #chair samccann 18:01:35 Current chairs: abadger1999 briantist cyberpear dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr samccann tadeboro 18:01:46 #topic Updates 18:01:46 #info The docs build is temporarily fixed, so latest and devel docs have been updated again 18:01:49 (The problem is that the build VM doesn't have enough RAM.) 18:01:51 o/ 18:02:00 #chair acozine 18:02:00 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine briantist cyberpear dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr samccann tadeboro 18:02:33 Fixed sans breadcrumbs 18:02:51 hello all 18:03:04 * cybette somewhat here, not feeling her best 18:03:33 #chair cidrblock cybette 18:03:33 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr samccann tadeboro 18:04:52 are there any more updates? 18:04:57 or is this a boring week? :) 18:05:37 probably a boring week 18:05:45 hot weather and holidays 18:05:58 here it's raining and cold... at least today and tomorrow. 18:06:00 (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere) 18:06:22 #info From today onwards we will be keeping the Community meeting to 1 hour, so we don't overlap with other meetings 18:06:33 we'll try hard :) 18:06:50 Yeah, i don't know that that will always be possible 18:07:02 I guess the idea is to make sure that open floor starts at ~55 minutes 18:07:11 yup 18:07:45 Maybe it would be better to think about how to restructure the meeting to get things that people have to be around for done in the first hour 18:07:48 * felixfontein thinks of the 2-hour meetings last year... ;) 18:08:29 it would be good to have some indication which topics people really want to discuss. there's the next_meeting label, but once these topics are through, ... 18:09:08 FYI ompragash is thinking about how to improve the meetings 18:09:15 +1 18:09:28 eyes reaction on github? 18:09:43 cyberpear: something like that would be helpful 18:09:54 ok, let's start with a topic so we get something done before the hour is over ;) 18:09:57 #topic 2021.09 Contributor Summit (part of Ansible Fest) 18:09:58 :) 18:09:59 #info Discussion: https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics/issues/30 18:10:05 Thanks 18:10:31 I think discussions are important to have at meetings. Cutting could be done on tickets (but we often come up with compromised and rewording of proposals in meetings) 18:10:45 #info Next Contributor Summit is 28th Sept & 1st October 18:11:16 #info Tuesday 28th September - self-paced & office hours 18:11:53 #info Friday 1st October - Usual interactive discussion 18:11:54 abadger1999: it probably makes sense to have (at least) one assigned person per issue, who will be responsible of updating the issue with the results from the discussion, and collecting / summing up the further feedback from the issue to something that can be finally voted on in another meeting 18:12:07 S/cutting/voting 18:12:16 heh 18:12:19 ah, or that :) 18:12:19 felixfontein: I like that idea 18:12:19 18:12:27 FYI andersson007_ is having connection problems at the moment 18:12:52 internet is still in holiday mode :) 18:13:44 about the topic: I guess this time we'll send people to matrix and not to IRC? that probably makes it more welcoming on Tuesday 18:13:55 felixfontein: yeah, provided there's enough time in meetings then (it distributes time over multiple meetings rather than reducing the in-meeting time) 18:14:32 It feels like we're ready for that. Gundalow do you know for sure? 18:15:06 As Contributors Summit is part of Ansible Fest we will likely get many hundreds of people joining us on Tuesday 28th. For a lot of these people this will be their first time interacting with the community, so it's a good opportunity for people to learn about how they can get involved 18:15:48 cyb-clock chimes 15 MIN into the meeting 18:16:12 i may have missed this, but is there a documentation of what are we missing in IRC and what are benefits of matrix? 18:16:36 aminvakil: gwmngilfen is working a write up on that, not got the link to hand 18:16:44 #info Contributor Summit 2021.09 hackmd https://hackmd.io/@ansible-community/contrib-summit-202109 18:16:48 o/ 18:16:53 #chair andersson007_ 18:16:53 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr samccann tadeboro 18:16:53 andersson007_: Hi there :) 18:16:54 sorry folks 18:16:55 gundalow: aha, thanks! 18:16:57 welcome back andersson007_! 18:16:58 hi:) 18:17:03 thanks! 18:17:04 :) 18:17:36 abadger1999: felixfontein Yes, next COntributor Summit will be on Matrix (video & chat) and also available on Liber.chat IRC 18:17:39 aminvakil: here's the link to the writeup (still in draft) https://hackmd.io/@ansible-community/Ansible_and_Matrix 18:17:44 aminvakil: hope to publish the whole thing tomorrow 18:17:45 cybette: Thanks :) 18:18:08 cybette: gwmngilfen: thank you! 18:18:09 If you join the Contributor Summit via Matrix you will have a nicer experience. 18:18:12 #chair gwmngilfen 18:18:12 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow gwmngilfen jillr samccann tadeboro 18:18:16 #chair aminvakil 18:18:16 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine aminvakil andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow gwmngilfen jillr samccann tadeboro 18:18:22 anyone else I forgot? 18:18:33 no furntiture thanks, just passing :P 18:18:34 o/ 18:18:35 So my question to all is, What could we offer on Tuesday? 18:18:42 #unchair gwmngilfen 18:18:42 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine aminvakil andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr samccann tadeboro 18:18:56 #chair lmodemal 18:18:56 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine aminvakil andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr lmodemal samccann tadeboro 18:19:44 gundalow: if we're expecting lots of new people, would contributor summit be an interesting place to do a panel like "Ask a Maintainer"? 18:19:57 I suspect a lot of folks don't actually know how open source projects work, in practice 18:20:07 true 18:20:13 Maybe we could offer "interactive" help for newcommers to development? 18:20:16 jillr: Yup, that sounds like a good idea. What do you think we could do underthat 18:20:43 tadeboro: yup, I expect various Red Hat people to be available to offer 1:1 help 18:20:50 gundalow: thinking out loud here, definitely take Q&A but just talk about like... who all these people are? what goes into running a FLOSS project? 18:21:10 If you've been to an in-person Ansible Fest, think in terms of "Ask an Expert" 18:21:15 how about a live walkthrough of the PR process? 18:21:17 also what are the responsibilities of a maintainer, as we've talked about looking for more maintainers for community repos 18:21:46 if I didn't know what that even meant, I might be hesitant to raise my hand to be a maintainer even if I was comfortable with the actual dev part 18:22:05 so, what does it mean when we say we're looking for maintainers for a collection? 18:22:10 tadeboro: sounds good as well. we'll need something that people can work on though, except if we only want to help people who already solved the first step(s) :) 18:22:53 we could have a couple of easy issues in reserve, and a couple of us could demonstrate creating a fork, creating a branch, making and committing the change, opening the PR, reviewing the PR, merging 18:23:08 jillr: i think we mean this https://github.com/ansible/community-docs/blob/main/maintaining.rst :) 18:23:22 acozine: so a non-interactive katacoda/instruct? :) 18:23:26 andersson007_: TIL! :) 18:23:27 felixfontein: I had in mind thins like setting up development env, making sure things talk to each other as one would expect, ... Things I do daily for our people that are starting to work on Ansible things. 18:23:37 andersson007_: true, but much as it pains me to say it, people don't always read the docs 18:24:03 They read them if you sit next to them and look at them with anger ;) 18:24:10 heh 18:24:18 * samccann practices her docs glower in the mirror 18:24:19 acozine: also true, especially if a document is not in the doc:) 18:24:37 official doc site i mean 18:24:40 felixfontein: I haven't used katacoda much, but that's definitely a possibility; I was thinking more like a live or recorded demo 18:25:06 andersson007_: heh, true 18:25:14 I personally like Katacoda/Instrucq for this type of thing as people can actually try it out 18:25:26 acozine: I think it's definitely a good idea. doing that in life would be nice I think 18:25:45 s/in life/live/ :) 18:25:55 the only constraint with Katacoda is that only one person can actually make the change and open the PR 18:26:20 acozine: well, 100 can open the same PR, but only one of them can get merged ;) 18:26:21 so the next person who does the exercise can't actually do the whole thing 18:26:42 yeah 18:27:00 anyway, I like jillr's idea better, though maybe there's room for both 18:27:21 I'd guess there's time for both 18:27:24 I like tadeboro's idea too 18:28:02 a kind of small-group class in understanding the Ansible development environment 18:28:21 I guess we could have a "main channel" where things like "demo of how to fix a bug/docs issue/... (including review and merge)" and "ask a maintainer" happen, and then such classes in smaller rooms / channels? 18:28:47 Another idea was to have some sprints/hackathons on Tuesday 18:29:29 I think that can be combined with the classes, when people find out how the workflow works, they can try it out on small projects 18:29:43 though we need a large enough set of small projects to work on for thta 18:30:18 asking people to come with their favorit^W most annoying bugs to fix ? 18:30:21 Have we done a how-to/what to expect when submitting a collection for ansible community pkg inclusion? 18:30:23 cyb-clock chimes 30 MIN into the meeting 18:30:41 that would be cool - have an intro class at 10:00 that leads into a hackathon and/or into the "ask a maintainer" session 18:30:53 misc: Yup, I think people need to know that in advance 18:31:10 misc: that could be things that are part of ansible-core and basically impossible to fix without breaking stuff :) 18:31:16 misc: ++ for `favorite bugs` 18:31:42 but I guess we'll find out when we ask :) 18:31:49 felixfontein: true, so either keep bugs on modules, or get people submit 5 bugs, and hope 1 is in modules ? 18:31:53 re: time zones, this time we'll most likely cater to US eastern time 18:32:19 cidrblock: that's a good idea too, a "The Road to the Ansible Package" session 18:32:58 Everything You Need To Know About Adding Collections To The Ansible Package But Were Afraid To Ask 18:33:01 sounds like related to the collection inclusion 18:33:11 I've seen people have a variety of experiences trying to get "in" 18:33:20 back in the Old Time, when me and Pilou were doing hackathons, the bugs we prepared with love (and haste the day before) were ignored, people usually had something to fix 18:33:31 Timing is a bit unfortunate for that since we will just end the inclusion period IIRC. 18:33:45 (but of course, if we had nothing prepared, people would ask for something...) 18:34:09 I'm not sure I'd want to be advertising too much how to get your collection into the `ansible` package at this state. 18:34:36 sounds sensible 18:35:09 gundalow: Well, people are generally interested in such things: https://github.com/ansible-collections/overview/issues/178 is one query I answered latelly. 18:35:35 ok, let's discuss this at most 5 more minutes, and then you can add more ideas to the discussion issue (https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics/issues/30) :) 18:35:56 tadeboro: That's a fair point. I just don't want to see a massive increase of incoming inclusion requests :) 18:35:57 felixfontein: ack 18:35:58 misc: atute observation ;-) 18:36:10 hmmm. if there is a limit to what we want in, should we cap it a number per release and be right up front about that? (realizes this is a topic for another day) 18:36:22 * abadger1999 *astute -- can't type today 18:36:26 gundalow: If we "explain" how hard it is to be included, we might be done with them for good ;) 18:36:34 tadeboro: perfect 18:36:35 lol 18:36:43 Q: Any ideas of easy_fix, goodfirstissue type things for people to do? 18:36:47 cidrblock: I think the main limit is reviewer time at the moment :) 18:37:02 got it 18:37:27 Yeah, we need to incentivize people to review. 18:37:50 so maybe have a review workshop, or get people review each others patches ? 18:38:01 Maybe a walkthrough of someone reviewing a collection? 18:38:19 it wold be a long session:) 18:38:23 Yeah, what misc said 18:38:26 depends on the size of the collection ;) 18:38:35 pre-record the session :P 18:38:41 the nice part is that people can review the same PR, and compare notes ? 18:38:55 "this recording has been edited for time and clarity" 18:39:04 it kinda become a "spot the 7 differences" game 18:39:17 let's wrap up the topic, please add your suggestions to https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics/issues/30 18:39:25 jillr: s/edited/accelerated/ 18:39:34 time lapse ;) 18:39:56 "find three wrong things in the patch" 18:40:23 ok, time for a topic change! 18:40:24 #topic More lightweight releases 18:40:24 #info Discussion: https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics/issues/29 18:40:26 If anyone is interested in helping out please let me knw 18:40:27 This is a community question on whether we can create more lightweight releases. Since we already had these discussions before: do we want to discuss it now, or somewhen later? 18:40:54 I think the question here is 18:40:55 `Is the Ansible package for users or developers` 18:41:27 I think gpl is the biggest issue 18:41:29 Did we ask/hear from legal about this issue? IIRC, this is where our last discussion ended. 18:41:32 I think the question more is "are we legally allowed to remove parts of collections?" :) 18:42:07 if it's ok to have two tarballs, one without tests and the other just tests, we could easily achieve this 18:42:11 And we haven't had any movement on the ticket i opened 18:42:30 abadger1999: Could you chase that ticket please? 18:42:41 or ping me the details internally and I can chase it 18:43:27 since the main problem right now is legal, I guess we can skip this topic (and hopefully abadger1999 and/or gundalow can increase progress on the legal side :) ) 18:44:01 I have a thought, it sidesteps the legal considerations 18:44:17 abadger1999: please elaborate :) 18:44:23 (if that didn't get everyone's attention...) 18:45:14 So.... execution environments are becoming a bigger part of the ecosystem that red hat is pushing for ansible users. 18:45:44 cyb-clock chimes 45 MIN into the meeting, 5 min on "more lightweight releases", 10 min to Open floor 18:45:55 What if we started constructing or giving people the ability to construct execution environments that targetted certain niches. 18:46:14 And then did something to promote those as ways to get and use ansible? 18:46:47 Then people would be downloading a subset of ansible rather than the whole package. 18:46:52 a repo of sample ansible-builder manifest files for things like networking/cloud/linux/windows/security etc? 18:47:15 the EEs would still include a lot of unnecessary things, like tests, though 18:47:30 (or does the build process remove them?) 18:48:12 As far as I know, ansible-builder just runs `ansible-galaxy collection install ...`, so the size problem will not go away. 18:48:13 I was thinking more of prebuilt images. 18:48:30 But if the tooling isn't there.... sample manifests might work too. 18:48:50 felixfontein: Yes. But I don't see a way around that until legal talks to us. 18:49:03 (yes, contains unnecessary tests) 18:49:10 But if we split the package into groups of collections and provide EEs for them, individual sizes will be smaller. 18:49:34 one problem with EEs is that not all community collections are ready for them. especially collections such as community.general will be problematic, as there is no requirements file for the whole collection (and it's really hard to compile such a file and keep it up to date) 18:49:55 confirmed, registry-proxy.engineering.redhat.com/rh-osbs/ansible-automation-platform-20-ee-supported-rhel8 contains all the tests 18:50:50 felixfontein: Work that we'd need to assemble community contributions around to accomplish... 18:50:55 and aiui only one EE can be used per playbook, so if you use anything from, for example, c.g.json_query in the same playbook as amazon.aws you can't use the cloud EE 18:51:28 it limits the usefulness of purpose-built EEs 18:51:28 (or install the collection playbook adjacent) 18:52:40 But people that use ansible package do not want to install collections, this is why they use ansible in the first place and not ansible-core. So this might be problematic. 18:52:44 the one benefit of having a manifest repo, the community may contribute to the effort of identifying all the required python packages over time 18:52:45 so basically for EEs to work well, we need to split up c.g into a larger number of more specialized collections? (or don't use c.g in EEs?) 18:52:56 I can certainly see an argument to make packaging smaller ansible easier. Maybe a list of files that the rpm spec or deb build could use to make a subpackage of the "extras" 18:53:14 * cyberpear hasn't played w/ EEs yet 18:54:02 cyberpear: it's fairly easy to create your own ansible package with antsibull with a limited set of collections. it's just that probably nobody did that yet :) 18:54:47 felixfontein: It would be interesting to see what requirements c.g actually has on control node since these are the only ones needed in EE. 18:54:53 since an EE can be a base layer for later EEs, they don't have to be 100%, I do like the idea of a getting started/sample repo here 18:54:55 felixfontein: yeah, but if you don't include all the collections, can you call it "ansible"? :P -- I was thinking splitting out the tests/docs into subpackages so a user could install just the essentials to make playbooks work w/ all the collections 18:55:20 tadeboro: since most modules can also be run on localhost, I guess the list will be fairly long 18:55:21 cyb-clock chimes 55 MIN into the meeting, please wrap up the topic (and meeting) soon 18:55:39 maybe community EEs become a topic for next week? 18:55:44 cyberpear: the resulting package name (ansible) is currently hard-coded... 18:55:46 felixfontein: Ugh, localhost + EE sounds ... fun? ;) 18:55:51 cidrblock: sounds good. can you create a topic issue for that? 18:56:00 ok, time's up for this topic today :) 18:56:03 #topic open floor 18:56:07 I still hope legal says "you can split things up". 18:56:20 I hope so too 18:56:42 #chair 18:56:42 Current chairs: abadger1999 acozine aminvakil andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr lmodemal samccann tadeboro 18:56:46 (PyPI/pip still doesn't have package splitting or weak deps, does it?) 18:56:47 Anyone got anything else? 18:56:53 i'll take a look through the minutes re contrib summit tomorrow, and figure out how we'll implement the ideas :) 18:57:03 gwmngilfen: thanks! 18:57:06 I put a summary of the Contrib Summit ideas here: https://github.com/ansible-community/community-topics/issues/30#issuecomment-875849452 18:57:15 oh brill, thanks acozine 18:57:17 acozine: thanks as well! 18:57:34 I must run, video meeting in three minutes 18:57:38 * acozine waves to all 18:57:42 acozine: Thanks :) 18:57:44 #unchair acozine 18:57:44 Current chairs: abadger1999 aminvakil andersson007_ briantist cidrblock cyberpear cybette dericcrago felixfontein gundalow jillr lmodemal samccann tadeboro 18:58:31 ok, if nobody has anything, I'll close in a minute :) 18:58:43 then we're done before one hour ;) 18:58:49 cyberpear: pypi/pip is very limited and I don't think the authors even know that package splitting and weak deps exist in other packaging systems ;-) 18:59:04 heh :) 18:59:11 hard stop here, great to "see" you all, talk next week 18:59:34 thanks everyone for being here! talk to you next week, or outside of meetings during the week :) 18:59:40 Thanks all! 18:59:42 #endmeeting