Rich Bowen asked a reasonable question in reviewing the Whimsy board report. My reply turned out to be longer than comment length, so I decided to post it here. Once it hits the archives, I'll add a link to this message in the board report.
--- Once upon a time there was a bot named Marvin that sent out reminders. It handled both board and incubator reminders. Bots, by their very nature, have to run in a hostile environment and human peccadilloes. Marvin (the bot) often misfired, and was often criticized. Ultimately, it was discontinued. I took on the task of re-implementing board reminders. I took advantage of pre-existing functions in Whimsy. I split out other pieces. This isn't yet automated, but the code for the automation is written, it is simply waiting for Brett's input on whether or not it is ready, and/or whether or not it should be automated (most likely the answer to the latter is yes, and the former is "it is close"). On the incubator side, Marvin (the person) took over sending reminders. There are a number of advantages to it being done by a person - error recovery and factoring in other knowledge are examples. The downside is that this can be labor intensive. Ultimately, this task is rotated, and John inquired here about automation. If there is interest, I would like to help. I answered questions, asked a few, and ultimately the discussion died off. This is not the first time that has happened. For my part, I'll be more than glad to develop either an initial prototype or even the final code -- provided there is somebody I can ask for requirements, and will evaluate and provide feedback on implementations. An example is provided below. There are a small number of exceptions to the names of podling mailing lists. I think I figured out most of them, but I would appreciate a review. - Sam Ruby On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote: >>> >>> A template is just one part of the process. Deciding which podlings >>> need to be reminded, and where to send those reminders is also >>> important. In particular, what are the exceptions. This very mailing >>> list is an exception, where the name does not match the PMC for ASF >>> infrastructure implementation reasons. >> >> To facilitate discussion, I tossed together a quick and dirty cross >> reference of active podlings vs mailing lists: >> >> https://whimsy.apache.org/incubator/maillist >> >> In particular, look for the gaps. I'm confident that this can be >> easily corrected, but this is the types of problems than need looking >> into. And an example of the types of problems that trip up automated >> jobs, either causing them to fail outright; or worse to silently fail. > > First level analysis: > > 1) old podlings which had mailing lists created using a different > (more difficult to graduate) infrastructure implementation: blur, wave > > 2) new podlings that don't yet have a mailing list: gearpump, mnemonic > > 3) podlings whose mailing lists are hosted by their sponsoring project: > log4cxx2 > > 4) podlings whose mailing lists are named differently: odftoolkit > > Thoughts? > > - Sam Ruby
