Open Stack

On Oct 24, 2013 9:14 PM, "Robert Collins" <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
>
> On 24 October 2013 04:33, Russell Bryant <rbryant at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > At the last Nova meeting we started talking about some updates to the
> > Nova blueprint process for the Icehouse cycle.  I had hoped we could
> > talk about and finalize this in a Nova design summit session on "Nova
> > Project Structure and Process" [1], but I think we need to push forward
> > on finalizing this as soon as possible so that it doesn't block current
> > work being done.
>
> Cool
>
> > Here is a first cut at the process.  Let me know what you think is
> > missing or should change.  I'll get the result of this thread posted on
> > the wiki.
> >
> > 1) Proposing a Blueprint
> >
> > Proposing a blueprint for Nova is not much different than other
> > projects.  You should follow the instructions here:
> >
> >     https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Blueprints
> >
> > The particular important step that seems to be missed by most is:
> >
> > "Once it is ready for PTL review, you should set:
> >
> > Milestone: Which part of the release cycle you think your work will be
> > proposed for merging."
> >
> > That is really important.  Due to the volume of Nova blueprints, it
> > probably will not be seen until you do this.
>
> The other thing I'm seeing some friction on is 'significant features'
> : it sometimes feels like folk are filing blueprints for everything
> that isn't 'the code crashed' style problems, and while I appreciate
> folk wanting to work within the system, blueprints are a heavyweight
> tool, primarily suited for things that require significant
> coordination.
>
> > 2) Blueprint Review Team
> >
> > Ensuring blueprints get reviewed is one of the responsibilities of the
> > PTL.  However, due to the volume of Nova blueprints, it's not practical
> > for me to do it alone.  A team of people (nova-drivers) [2], a subset of
> > nova-core, will be doing blueprint reviews.
>
> Why a subset of nova-core? With nova-core defined as 'knows the code
> well *AND* reviews a lot', I can see that those folk are in a position
> to spot a large class of design defects. However, there are plenty of
> folk with expertise in e.g. SOA, operations, deployment @ scale, who
> are not nova-core but who will spot plenty of issues. Is there some
> way they can help out?
>
> > By having more people reviewing blueprints, we can do a more thorough
> > job and have a higher quality result.
> >
> > Note that even though there is a nova-drivers team, *everyone* is
> > encouraged to participate in the review process by providing feedback on
> > the mailing list.
>
> I'm not sure about this bit here: blueprints don't have the spec
> content, usually thats in an etherpad; etherpads are editable by
> everyone - wouldn't it be better to keep the conversation together? I
> guess part of my concern here comes back to the (ab)use of blueprints
> for shallow features.
>
> > 3) Blueprint Review Criteria
> >
> > Here are some things that the team reviewing blueprints should look for:
> >
> > The blueprint ...
> >
> >  - is assigned to the person signing up to do the work
> >
> >  - has been targeted to the milestone when the code is
> >    planned to be completed
> >
> >  - is an appropriate feature for Nova.  This means it fits with the
> >    vision for Nova and OpenStack overall.  This is obviously very
> >    subjective, but the result should represent consensus.
> >
> >  - includes enough detail to be able to complete an initial design
> >    review before approving the blueprint. In many cases, the design
> >    review may result in a discussion on the mailing list to work
> >    through details. A link to this discussion should be left in the
> >    whiteboard of the blueprint for reference.  This initial design
> >    review should be completed before the blueprint is approved.
> >
> >  - includes information that describes the user impact (or lack of).
> >    Between the blueprint and text that comes with the DocImpact flag [3]
> >    in commits, the docs team should have *everything* they need to
> >    thoroughly document the feature.
>
> I'd like to add:
>  - has an etherpad with the design (the blueprint summary has no
> markup and is a poor place for capturing the design).
>
> > Once the review has been complete, the blueprint should be marked as
> > approved and the priority should be set.  A set priority is how we know
> > from the blueprint list which ones have already been reviewed.
>
>
> > 4) Blueprint Prioritization
> >
> > I would like to do a better job of using priorities in Icehouse.  The
> > priority field services a couple of purposes:
> >
> >   - helps reviewers prioritize their time
> >
> >   - helps set expectations for the submitter for how reviewing this
> >     work stacks up against other things
> >
> > In the last meeting we discussed an idea that I think is worth trying at
> > least for icehouse-1 to see if we like it or not.  The idea is that
> > *every* blueprint starts out at a Low priority, which means "best
> > effort, but no promises".  For a blueprint to get prioritized higher, it
> > should have 2 nova-core members signed up to review the resulting code.
> >
> > If we do this, I suspect we may end up with more blueprints at Low, but
> > I also think we'll end up with a more realistic list of blueprints.  The
> > reality is if a feature doesn't have reviewers agreeing to do the
> > review, it really is in a "best effort, but no promises" situation.
>
> I think this makes a lot of sense. Its the same basic triage process
> we're using in the TripleO Kanban experiment - things that aren't in
> the project current roadmap don't get unlimited resources; some things
> are declined, and things in the roadmap everyone in the team comes
> together to ensure a timely, effective delivery. The difference is
> that we're operating with a deliberate overlap between folk's effort -
> keeping the concurrent topics being worked on low, sacrificing a
> little output to duplicate effort, but gaining a whole lot of
> velocity.
>
> Joe: I disagree about merging patches with not-"approved" blueprints.
> They are no worse than patches that don't have a blueprint.

I based that on this statement, which I think sums it up well "If the patch
implements a feature, it should reference a blueprint. The blueprint should
be approved before the patch is merged"

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/ReviewChecklist

This does raise the question of what is consisted a feature though.

>
> Patches for a *declined* blueprint however, I agree they should
> require special examination.
>
> -Rob
>
> --
> Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
> Distinguished Technologist
> HP Converged Cloud
>
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