A related comment: if there are to be any other mail-bots, please can they use a name that is unlikely to be confused with human, particularly an ASF member?
On 30 September 2015 at 16:03, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote: > On 09/30/2015 10:33 AM, Jim Jagielski wrote: >> >> What I liked is that Marvin had 1 job: send reminders. As a general >> rule of thumb, I dislike large monolithic platforms because they >> become much too unwieldy, hence my "hesitation" in folding >> it into Whimsy. But it is obvious that that position is no >> longer tenable, esp when even when Marvin does its job correctly, >> it gets "blamed" for "incorrect" postings and instead of fixing >> what exists, people decide to recreate the wheel... But, after >> all, if that's what people wish to do, who am I to get in the >> way :) > > > It is a matter of perspective. I have taken occasion to look at Marvin and > what I didn't like is that what I saw was a large monolithic script. By > contrast, what whimsy has become is a collection of tools, with common code > factored out into libraries. > > Add to that the fact that I couldn't see a way to run Marvin on my machine > and I couldn't find any tests, and I largely stayed away. > > I see this as mostly a matter of history. The secretarial workbench (one of > the whimsy applications) is largely the same way. Other than being able to > run it on your own machine (or VM), it is also monolithic and with no tests. > > By contrast, what the board agenda tool has become is a set of components > and small scripts, each focused on a single task, and with tests. The role > call application that Craig uses is for all practical purposes a separate > application that is embedded in the board agenda. I have similar plans for > the roster tool: the "add a committer to a PMC" tool will be small > component. > > Similarly, I hope that sending reminders becomes a small (as in one printed > page) script that doesn't do anything more than check the date, load a list > of intended recipients, and send a emails. Everything else is factored out, > and the underlying data (PMCs, podlings, etc) can be displayed and updated > using a web application. Backed and supported by a set of people who are > able to run the small scripts on their machine, make changes, run tests, and > push the changes out to production. > > It will take time, but if I can get people to join me, I'm confident that > together we will get there. > > "You may say I'm a dreamer > But I'm not the only one > I hope some day you'll join us > And the world will be as one" > > - Sam Ruby > > >>> On Sep 30, 2015, at 10:14 AM, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote: >>> >>> On 09/30/2015 09:24 AM, Jim Jagielski wrote: >>>> >>>> Please kill Marvin the bot. Sam wants to take over its functionality >>>> within Whimsy and I see no reason to continue any work at all in >>>> Marvin. People prefer adding stuff to Whimsy instead of fixing >>>> Marvin, which is fine by me. >>>> >>>> So just trash Marvin totally and completely... I will no >>>> longer work on it or bother with it at all. >>> >>> >>> First, a big thanks for maintaining Marvin to this point! I'm aware of >>> how thankless that job can be, and how it often involves taking >>> responsibility for fixing things that are outside your control. >>> >>> - - - >>> >>> Second: Gulp. The biggest "problem" with Marvin the bot is that it has >>> (had?) one primary maintainer. A problem that Whimsy shares. >>> >>> I plan to address that problem. >>> >>> For the near term, my focus will be on making it possible for people to >>> run individual whimsy tools on their own machine (Mac OS/X, Linux, docker >>> container, Vagrant VM) so that people can try out changes before >>> contributing them back. >>> >>> With respect to the incubator, what I would like to see is podlings >>> integrated into both the roster[1] and agenda[2] tools. >>> >>> I'm currently rewriting the roster tool to take advantage of things I >>> learned with the latest agenda rewrite. The goal is to make the roster tool >>> totally read/write: there will no longer be a need to ssh into >>> people.apache.org to run a Perl script to update committee info. Everything >>> should be doable from a web interface. >>> >>> What this also means is that cron jobs will tend to be small scripts. >>> Take a list of items (a list which you can see using the web interface, for >>> example, a list of board agenda items which are missing) and perform an >>> action (like send an email). >>> >>> When this is done there should never again be a need to edit podlings.xml >>> with a text editor. >>> >>> I'm also planning to take the following to heart: http://s.apache.org/hZ >>> >>> As applied to the incubator, what I plan to do is to rough in podling >>> support and leave it to others to fill in the details. >>> >>> - - - >>> >>> Places to get started (in preferred order): >>> >>> >>> https://svn.apache.org/repos/infra/infrastructure/trunk/projects/whimsy/README >>> >>> https://github.com/rubys/whimsy-agenda#readme >>> >>> >>> https://svn.apache.org/repos/infra/infrastructure/trunk/projects/whimsy/www/test/roster >>> >>> Preferred place for discussion: >>> >>> dev@whimsical.apache.org >>> >>> - Sam Ruby >>> >>> [1] https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ >>> [2] https://whimsy.apache.org/board/agenda/ >> >> >
