Open Stack

So TripleO has a tech debt policy: 
https://specs.openstack.org/openstack/tripleo-specs/specs/policy/tech-debt-tracking.html 
(and I'm tagging tripleo on this thread for visibility).

It essentially comes down to: open a bug, tag it "tech-debt", and 
reference it in the code near the tech debt.  I kind of like that 
approach because it makes use of the existing integration between Gerrit 
and Launchpad, and we don't have to invent a new system for triaging 
tech debt.  It just gets treated as the appropriate level bug.

I guess my question then would be whether there is sufficient advantage 
to inventing a new system in Reno when we already have systems in place 
that seem suited to this.  I have a few specific thoughts below too.

On 02/08/2018 04:43 PM, Gabriele Cerami wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sometimes it happens, while reviewing a patch, to find an issue that
> is not quite a bug, because it doesn't limit functionality, but
> may represent a problem in some corner case, or with some possible
> future modification in some component involved in the patch; it may
> best be described as a weakness in the code, which may happen only under
> certain circumstances.
> The author, for some time or complexity constraint is creating a
> technical debt, or making a micro design choice.
> 
> How to keep track of the issue ? How, after 6 month when there's time
> and bandwidth to look at the problem again, can this note be found and
> issue dealt in the way it deserves ?
> How to help prioritize then the list of issues left behind during the
> duration of a release ?
> Nobody is going to read all the comments on all the merged patches in
> the past months, to find all the objections.
> Also technical debts cannot be treated like bugs, because they have a
> different life span. A bug is opened and closed for good after a while.

I'm not sure I agree.  Bugs stay open until they are fixed/won't fixed. 
Tech debt stays open until it is fixed/won't fixed.  We've had bugs open 
for years for things that are tricky to fix.  Arguably those are tech 
debt too, but in any case I'm not aware of any problems with using the 
bug tracker to manage them.

> A technical debt may be carried for long time, and it would be perfectly
> natural to mark it as something to just live with, and pay the interest
> for, because the time required to solve it it's not worth it. And
> despite that, it's important to keep track of them because an eventual
> reevaluation of the interests cost or a change in the surroundings (a
> new requirement that breaks an assumption) may lead to a different
> decision after some time.
> 
> The way technical debts are treated right now officially is by adding a
> TODO note inside the code, or maybe adding a "issue" field in release
> notes.
> I would like to expand this TODO note, and the known issue field,
> make it become something more structured.
> I thought about reno, to create a technical debt register/micro design
> document.
> A developer would generate a UUID, put on the code a comment
> 
> # TD: <uuid>
> 
> and then add the description in reno. A simple yaml associative array
> with three or four keys: UUID, description, consequences, options, which
> may describe either the problem or the micro design choice and
> assumption without which the code may show these weaknesses.
> The description would stay with the code, submitted with the same
> patch with which it was introduced. Then when it's time, a report on all
> these description could be created to evaluate, prioritize and
> eventually close the gap that was created, or just mark that as "prefer
> to just deal with the consequences"
> 
> One may later incur in a problem a number of times, find the piece of
> code responsible, and see that the problem is know, and immediately
> raise its impact to request a reevaluation.
> Or we may realize that the code that creates a certain amount of
> weaknesses is going to be deleted, and we can close all the items
> related to it.
> 
> The creation and handling of such items could add too much of a burden
> to the developer, for these reasons, I would prefer to automate some
> part of the creation, for example the UUID generation, date expansion,
> status change on the item.
> 
> I used this, to try out how this automation could work
> 
> https://review.openstack.org/538233
> 
> which could add basic logic to the templates, to automate some of the
> tasks.
> 
> This idea certainly requires refinement (for example what happens when
> the weakness is discovered at a later time), but I would like to
> understand if it's possible to use reno for this approach. Any feedback
> would be highly appreciated.

I'm kind of split on the idea of templates for Reno.  On the one hand I 
could see it being useful for complex things, but on the other I wonder 
if something complex enough to require a template actually belongs in 
release notes or if it should go in formal documentation.