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Llewellyn van der Merwe

Production Dept. Meeting MINUTES - August 23, 2022

By Llewellyn van der Merwe on 2022-08-27 13:15 in Production

Production Dept. Meeting MINUTES
- August  23, 2022

Participants: Benjamin Trenkle (Department Coordinator), Hannes Papenberg (Team Leader), Harald Leithner (Release Lead 5.0), Mike Brandner (Team Leader), Olivier Buisard (Release Manager 4.3), Shirielle “SD” Williams (Release Manager 4.3), Roland Dalmulder (Release Lead 4.2), Franciska Perisa (Release Lead 4.2), Christiane Maier-Stadtherr (Team Leader), Llewellyn van der Merwe (Assistant Department Coordinator), Niels Braczek (Team Leader), Sigrid Gramlinger (Team Leader), Philip Walton (Marketing Liaison), Robert Deutz (Team Leader), Tobias Zulauf (Release Lead 3.10)
Absent: Viviana Menzel (Assistant Team Leader), David Jardin (Team Leader), Jacob Waisner (Team Leader), Shivam Rajput (Team Leader)

Production Department Coordinator (Benjamin Trenkle)

  • Crystal Dionysopoulos, Elisa Foltyn & Angie Radtke started to outline a new UX team. Defining goals, defining the scope etc. Interested people can use https://airtable.com/shrS8wFIFxxfsyCPn to get in touch.
  • Motion: We move the release date +2 months, so it does not interfere with holidays. (Release date for 4.3 would then be 18th of April, 4.4 in October)
  • Motion: Deprecated code will be removed earliest +2 major versions after its declared deprecated (e.g. deprecated in 4.3 will be earliest removed in 6.0)
  • Motion: All deprecated code will get the following syntax:
    @deprecated x.y, will be removed in (x+2).0 without replacement
    or
    @deprecated x.y, will be removed in (x+2).0 - use … instead.
    An example for the new solution MUST be provided.
  • Motion: New features need to be documented for end users in docs.joomla.org how to use it and for developers in manual.joomla.org how to implement it in a 3rd party extension starting with the 4.3 branch before they get merged. Proposed enhancement of the GitHub template at the end (by removing “Documentation required” section): ### Link to documentations
    • Please post here the link to the docs.joomla.org where this feature is described for an end user
    • Please post here the link to the pull request for manual.joomla.org where is described how this feature can be used from 3rd party developers
  • TBD: “Feature buddies”: a group of non-programmers which can help to write end-user documentation supported by the programmer
  • TBD: Issues/PRs raised should lead to a (cypress) test
  • Also for A11y + UX there should be some requirements a PR has to fulfil, but this needs some work to define

Bug Squad Team (Jacob Waisner)

  • Joomla 4.2 release! Great job Ronald and Franciska on leading this release!

Joomla! Enhancement Development Team (Shivam Rajput)

  • Google Summer of Code (GSoC)
    • Contributors will submit their final work details.
      • September 5 - September 12 - 18:00 UTC
    • Final Evaluation Deadline.
      • September 12 - September 19 - 18:00 UTC
  • The Update Framework (TUF)
    • Code Sprint September 16. - 18. September

Joomla! Accessibility Team (Christiane Maier-Stadtherr)

  • Watching / approving PRs and issues related to accessibility. At the moment, all issues/PRs labelled as a11y are under supervision but this label is set manually and does not mean that PRs have to be approved before merging.
  • Documentation for a11y - the structure needs to be elaborated.
  • Landing page got some information for accessibility improvements.

Automated Testing Team (Hannes Papenberg)

Release Managers (Harald, Niels, Olivier, SD, Roland, Franciska, Tobias, Llewellyn)

Release Manager 5.0 (Harald Leithner, Niels Braczek):

  • Remove the RFC process?

Release Manager 4.3 (Olivier Buisard, “SD” Williams):

  • Finalising list of features desired for inclusion in the next release and began reaching out to developers to ask status and if willing to continue. We’ve requested a reply by 8/28

Release Lead 4.2 (Roland Dalmulder, Franciska Perisa)

  • 4.2.1 will be released next week to get the remaining important issues fixed first

Production: Thank you Roland & Franciska for managing 4.2 and your first release.

Release Lead 3.10 (Tobias Zulauf):

  • Joomla 3.10.11 release was successful and is now in security only mode.
  • Together with Brian and the JBS we are reviewing the still open J3 issues and checking whether they still apply to J4 or it can be closed. More details here: https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/discussions/38560#discussion-4326277
    On this note. Thanks to Brian who brought it up again and already did the first batch of issue reviews!

Maintainer Framework (Niels Braczek):

  • All packages in the Framework can now be installed without problems on PHP 8.0 and 8.1 and are also tested on 8.2. All repositories - including "database" and "http" - now use Drone for the CI. New releases were required to get all builds green.
  • All repositories will have a protected main branch that only receives finished contributions, so that a new release can be made from there at any time. This serves to prepare a 1-button release solution. Development will still take place on 2.0-dev or then 3.0-dev or on separate feature branches (recommended). Alternatively, it is considered to use abstractions instead of branches with version numbers: 'previous' (currently named 1.x-dev), 'current' (2.0-dev, main), 'next-minor' (2.0-dev, 2.x-dev) and 'next-major' (3.0-dev). ‘previous’ and ‘current’ only receive bug fixes. New features are added to the ‘next-minor’ branch. Any breaking changes go into the ‘next-major’ branch.
  • The next steps are the transition to PSR-12 (PER-1) and the opening of a branch for development of 3.0 for all packages.
  • In parallel, the measures will be built into the documentation on framework.joomla.org. The release cycles are going to read like this (not yet published): 
    Starting with version 4.0 of the Joomla! CMS, the lifecycle of the Joomla! Framework is coupled to the lifecycle of the Joomla! CMS. Each major version of the Joomla! CMS comes with a new major version of the Joomla! Framework. See the [Developer Roadmap](https://developer.joomla.org/roadmap.html) for more information.

| Version | PHP             | Released   | End of life |
|---------|-----------------|------------|-------------|
| 1       | PHP 5 >= 5.3.10 | 2013-11-28 | 2023-08-17  |
| 2       | PHP 7 >= 7.2.5  | 2021-08-17 | 2025-08-17  |
| 3       | PHP 8 >= 8.1.0  | 2023-08-17 |             |

Software Architecture & Strategy Team (Niels Braczek)

  • Scratching our own itches, it happens to all of us again and again that we overlook where others have their pain points. We've been discussing how to solve this for a long time and have come to the conclusion that we finally need personas that represent our users. So far we have identified seven groups, represented by these persona sketches:
    • M.M. - a developer producing mass market extensions to make a living from it
    • B.A. - a developer producing bespoke applications on customer request based on the CMS
    • C.S. - a site builder (integrator) combining existing solutions to match a customer's request.
    • T.D. - a template designer creating the look and feel of a site.
    • B.O. - a non-professional building a site for their own use.
    • S.A. - a site owner administering their own site.
    • M.C. - an office employee creating and managing content.
    We had a talk with Angie Radtke, member of the (upcoming) UX Group. We quickly agreed that it should be up to the UX Group (likely in cooperation with marketing) to further elaborate the personas. In the first step, it is irrelevant what share the individual groups actually have in our user base - this can (and must) then be surveyed in a next step.
    In any case, when these personas are ready, the meta-document template for the RFC process should be extended by a section in which the consequences (pro/con) for the individual groups can be gathered and documented.
  • We made a summary of pros and cons mentioned in this discussion #38407 regarding the release cycle, so we can have a closer look at it. The summary does not contain any decisions or official opinions, its purpose is to facilitate discussion within the department.
  • Niels joined the JXT as liaison for SA&S.

CMS Release Team (Sigrid Gramlinger)

  • In the future - specially with auto updates, gather statistics on successful updates by triggering the statistics plugin on “onJoomlaAfterUpdate”
  • We had another round for the “Post Release Process” Document with past and present Release Managers to include their experience with their releases and have more “guidance” for future releases. We talked about the decision chart introduced by Benjamin and Phil and tried to prove it with the last issues. There is still need for further refinement.

CMS Maintenance Team (Robert Deutz)

  • We are planning a Code Sprint in October.
  • Robert joined the new UX as Liaison to the Maintenance team

Other Business

  • “The old search” still has no formal stable release. It’s now over one year and we have open issues and PRs there. Do we have to find someone else who can take a look here?
    => We are looking for volunteers, if someone is interested, please contact us.