16:59:41 <ahf> #startmeeting network team meeting, 23 september 2019
16:59:41 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Sep 23 16:59:41 2019 UTC.  The chair is ahf. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
16:59:41 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
16:59:46 <ahf> hello everyone o/
16:59:55 <asn> o/
16:59:56 <ahf> our pad for today is at https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-netteam-2019.1-keep
17:00:18 <nickm> hi all!
17:00:20 <gaba> hi!!
17:00:22 <ahf> do we have everyone minus david today?
17:00:26 <ahf> and tim
17:00:29 * asn writing report
17:00:40 * catalyst is here
17:01:08 <nickm> that leaves mikeperry ?
17:01:13 <ahf> we have a long list of things todo today, so let\s start with the usual stuff
17:01:29 <ahf> https://pad.riseup.net/redirect#https%3A//dip.torproject.org/torproject/core/tor/boards
17:01:32 <ahf> whoops
17:01:38 <ahf> https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/core/tor/-/boards
17:01:41 <ahf> is our roadmap
17:02:09 <nickm> seems plausible to me
17:02:31 <ahf> i see that one of my tickets is missing there
17:02:38 <ahf> but does it look OK to everyone else?
17:02:43 <gaba> ahf: maybe is because is from the anti-censorship?
17:02:47 <gaba> which one?
17:03:20 <ahf> #31810 is one i grabbed friday
17:03:42 <ahf> do you want me to just create a redirection issue on torproject/core/tor and add it?
17:03:48 <gaba> ahh, it was not on the roadmap. You are getting it because 0.4.2
17:03:54 <gaba> yes please
17:04:05 <gaba> or I can do it
17:04:10 <ahf> i can do it after the meeting
17:04:14 <gaba> ok
17:04:23 <ahf> ok, everyone else is OK with the state of the roadmap?
17:05:01 <ahf> let's go to the 042status page at https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/CoreTorReleases/042Status
17:05:34 <ahf> we do have a discussion point related to this moved forward from last week
17:05:44 <nickm> (note that I removed a bunch of items from the branch last week; see my status for the keyword I used to tag them)
17:06:09 <nickm> Is dgoulet the logical reviewer on #31614? He's not around till next week.
17:06:14 <nickm> iiuc
17:06:20 <ahf> in that our list of -must tickets with no assignee got shorter, but the list of taken -should tickets are still pretty high
17:07:12 <ahf> hmmm
17:07:23 * nickm adjust all "must" priorities to "very high" to make them stand out
17:07:46 <ahf> david seems like he already reviewed parts of this thing
17:08:02 <ahf> but only with an indentation comment
17:08:46 <nickm> I'll take the review on it this week
17:08:52 <ahf> ok
17:09:37 <ahf> so we dont have any unassigned very high tickets as far as i can tell?
17:09:50 <ahf> but the list of unassigned other tickets are still quiet high
17:09:57 <nickm> yeah; 19 of them right now
17:10:57 <nickm> let's work on assigning them during update time
17:11:10 <nickm> for now: is anybody not making progress or not likely to make progress with any 042-must/should tickets?
17:11:14 <nickm> we should adjust if so
17:11:21 <ahf> update time?
17:11:40 <mikeperry> oh hey
17:11:48 <ahf> o/ mikeperry
17:11:58 <mikeperry> I got confused wrt the Oct 2 patch meeting time this week rather than next
17:11:59 <mikeperry> sorry about that
17:12:06 <ahf> no worries
17:12:28 <ahf> mikeperry: when you do your updates to the pad, can you revise the list of things you might have to drop and maybe have dropped?
17:12:52 <ahf> nickm: what did you mean with update time here?
17:13:05 <nickm> sorry, discussion time
17:13:10 <mikeperry> ahf: yeah I did. all of those things will continue to be ijn some state of ris until Oct 22
17:13:18 <mikeperry> ris=risk
17:14:00 <ahf> mikeperry: okay! cool, please update items there if there is anything to add, otherwise it gets hard to continue to have an overview of 8)
17:14:03 <ahf> nickm: oki, cool!
17:14:56 <ahf> we have some announcements that a new this week: nick has gotten a new phone and new signal security number and tonight at 22 we have the ED tea time with isa
17:15:11 <ahf> i think otherwise we can start with discussion items?
17:15:24 <ahf> wait
17:15:25 <ahf> no!
17:15:30 <ahf> are the reviewer assignments looking OK?
17:15:50 <asn> there were lots of reviews this week
17:15:55 <asn> so everyone got about 2.5 of them
17:16:05 <asn> except from david and mike
17:16:26 <ahf> thanks asn
17:16:39 <asn> cheers
17:16:42 <ahf> anybody who have gotten something they dont think they will get around to do already?
17:17:14 <ahf> i take that as a no
17:17:46 <ahf> lets do discussion items
17:18:28 <ahf> first one is related to 042 status that we just talked about: how do we distribute the load of the current unassigned tickets for 042 to the team
17:18:47 <ahf> i see some natural owners to some of them. david is good at scheduler/kist, but is also not around right now, so i think those can wait untill he is around
17:18:54 <ahf> there is some windows stuff that i am the natural person for
17:19:32 <ahf> are there some tickets in this set that people think they would be the best for, and want to take ownership of now, so others can see that they intent to work on it sometime in the future?
17:19:52 <asn> imo they should be assigned, similarly to how reviews are assigned
17:20:09 <asn> that is, if targetted assignment does not work, pseudorandomly
17:20:23 <gaba> agree
17:20:46 <nickm> ok w me
17:20:48 <ahf> we can do that. would people be OK with me (and maybe gaba?) trying to do an assignment on this work?
17:20:55 <asn> yes
17:20:57 <mikeperry> I can do #31653 quick enough
17:21:05 <nickm> mikeperry: assign to yourself then?
17:21:06 <ahf> mikeperry: please assign yourself then :-)
17:21:13 <mikeperry> aassinging it now
17:21:20 <asn> there should also be a clear exceptation of up to when they should be done
17:21:31 <asn> in terms of timeline
17:21:47 <ahf> nickm: when do you wnat things done at latest? i guess that goes for all the mergers really
17:23:17 <nickm> so we want to do a stable release on 15 Dec.  To do that, we need to get alphas out earlier, leading to an rc with no known bugs.  It helps if the rc with no known bugs is out around 15 Nov
17:23:47 <nickm> To do that, it would really help if we had our next alpha in a couple of weeks
17:24:04 <ahf> okay, so a bit over a month and a half to do these
17:24:09 <nickm> and get them merged
17:24:12 <nickm> and revised
17:24:14 <ahf> yeah
17:24:20 <nickm> and fix whatever problems they turn up
17:24:57 <ahf> oki, cool, gaba and i will try to distribute the load of these and i hope people wont get stressed from it even though it is a few bugs per person. it seems like we do have some time to do them, but not a long time
17:25:40 <ahf> ok
17:25:42 <nickm> If you get anything you don't know how to do fast, please talk to other people, and don't just sit on it
17:26:01 <ahf> yes, next monday we will probably talk about it and people can swap if they need to
17:26:10 <asn> there is no next monday
17:26:13 <ahf> eek
17:26:14 <asn> oh is there?
17:26:17 <ahf> good catch, next wednesday meeting
17:26:18 <asn> it is
17:26:24 <asn> next monday is 30th
17:26:31 <asn> (sorry for the bikeshedding)
17:26:54 <ahf> we have in our schedule that the next meeting is wednesday the 2nd of october though. is there some US holiday coming up?
17:26:57 <asn> ok
17:27:36 <catalyst> i see arguments either way for Sep 30 vs Oct 2 being the next meeting
17:27:58 <ahf> let\s stick to the schedule so we dont confuse people who arent here, i think the schedule have been there for a while
17:28:22 <asn> ok
17:28:29 <nickm> (It's Rosh Hashanah, but I don't know if that's a company holiday.)
17:28:59 <ahf> ok
17:29:45 <catalyst> (last time this would have come up is Apr 29 vs May 1, i think)
17:30:07 <ahf> next item is also a follow up item from last week: we discussed the PR policy that i got the feeling that most people seemed happy with. mikeperry expressed some concerns about these guidelines. i have the feeling the people who often reviews very large patches do agree that being able to have a guideline to point people to when they get very large PRs would make them happier
17:30:42 <ahf> so i am a bit unsure what next natural step would be. i think it would be to turn it into a policy that we can try out and vote on, but i also don't know if others share mikeperry's concern here?
17:30:54 <nickm> well, if we have a -1, then the policy doesn't pass
17:31:07 <nickm> so it's probably not something we can propose as-is
17:31:07 <mikeperry> I can produce an alternative, in response to dgoulet, who also had issues with this specific aspect of the prposal
17:31:09 <ahf> right, so would anybody vote -1 on it right now?
17:31:21 <ahf> mikeperry: okay! that would be interesting
17:31:42 <mikeperry> I believe I would vote -1 on this. it feels railroaded and I also believe dgoulet would -1, until we figure out this piece
17:31:53 <mikeperry> so I can try to propose such an alternative
17:32:30 <nickm> whoa, that's serious.  What do you mean by "railroaded"?
17:32:41 <ahf> cool. i think that would be interesting. it is something we should try to make progress on, so do you think it could happen this week?
17:32:44 <mikeperry> we're not waiying for dgoulet to vote before adopting it?
17:33:04 <ahf> we should, yeah, but i think david is back on monday
17:33:09 <nickm> (also our policy process explicitly deals with people going away)
17:33:27 <nickm> (a policy cannot become adopted until it has been provisionally adopted for a while, and nobody has -1'd it.)
17:33:46 <ahf> the reason i ask about next step is because if i know someone already know want to -1 it, then its current shape is not good enough to be turned into a policy
17:35:54 <nickm> mikeperry: could you give a short summary of your alternative?
17:37:17 <mikeperry> large PRs must but split into small reviewable commits, and must have an early, quick architectural review. additionally, they should be exposed to a special CI queue that gives them more CI exposure, to catch rare CI flapping bugs
17:38:03 <ahf> we don't have money i think to have such a queue?
17:38:26 <ahf> i think everyone wants faster CI, but right now i don't think that is gonna happen
17:38:42 <nickm> one possibility I thought of is that if you and dgoulet are the only people who want to write huge branches, and the only people who think it is reasonable to review huge branches, you could just reveiew all each other's huge branches. ;)
17:38:47 <nickm> *sp
17:39:03 <nickm> though probably that wouldn't be as pleasant as it sounds, and there are also the mergers to think of
17:39:11 <ahf> nickm: that is not a good solution though to build silos on policy #2 though :S
17:39:20 <ahf> and yeah, the mergers still need to look at this
17:39:23 <catalyst> nickm: that sounds like a "split the party" scenario
17:39:40 <nickm> yup; not actually a good idea
17:39:48 <catalyst> and the rest of us have to deal with the resulting code quality
17:40:50 <ahf> "fast(er) CI" on /some/ platforms is a discussion i am very open for when we get passed the gitlab migration, since i think we might be able to do something then
17:41:12 <ahf> but until then i think it is very unrealistic, unless we find a sponsor who is willing to make our current solutions faster with a near zero effort change from our side
17:41:49 <ahf> i think the actionable item right now is that mikeperry writes to network team with their suggestion to this within the next week or so, so we can try to make some progress to this?
17:42:17 <nickm> ok
17:42:19 <gaba> sounds good as a next step
17:42:33 <nickm> another actionable thing I am doing, and others can do too, voluntarily:
17:42:42 <nickm> I am trying to make all my PRs comply with this policy
17:42:47 <nickm> so I get a feel for how hard it is
17:43:08 <nickm> (I won't get a feel for the "big branches" thing again till 043 is open)
17:43:20 <ahf> i think experimenting with how you want this to happen is great
17:43:49 <ahf> ok, cool!
17:43:59 <ahf> retrospective
17:44:04 <ahf> gaba: do you want to say something here?
17:44:22 <gaba> mostly that we need to find a date
17:44:24 * ahf is fine with moving it to 1st of october
17:44:30 <gaba> this week doesn't work for asn
17:44:35 <gaba> so I'm proposing next week
17:45:12 <asn> ack
17:45:24 <ahf> anybody who cannot make 1st of october, 20 UTC?
17:45:30 <ahf> i think it is two hours after our gitlab meeting
17:45:39 <asn> i can do it
17:45:55 <ahf> catalyst, nickm, mikeperry: OK with you?
17:45:58 <asn> maybe david is also gonna be around
17:46:20 <mikeperry> that should be fine
17:46:28 <nickm> works for me, but if we need to postpone, then next time let's do a doodle-style poll instead of a boolean query
17:46:33 <ahf> asn: yep!
17:46:39 <catalyst> that time works for me
17:46:48 <ahf> nickm: good point
17:46:57 <ahf> gaba: lets hear teor later if they can make it too
17:47:01 <gaba> we had a doodle when we set up retrospectives. The idea is the last tuesday of the month for what I understood
17:47:04 <gaba> ok
17:47:28 <ahf> are people OK with doing jitsi? i am a huge fan of these jitsi meetings over irc, but that might just be me
17:47:38 <asn> ok
17:49:19 <ahf> ... i see no objections
17:49:25 <gaba> :)
17:49:27 <ahf> ok, 10 min. left and we have one item left
17:49:45 <ahf> how do we handle reviews that are needed to be done during the week (after monday)
17:49:53 <ahf> right now asn and dgoulet does assignments monday each week
17:50:06 <ahf> but sometimes we all have things we really want to get in even though it goes into needs_review after monday
17:50:22 <ahf> we are not going to ask asn and david to do more of this during the week and as it is already very nice they do this for us each monday
17:50:53 <ahf> so one thing i think we can do, is that people prod around in an open manner in #tor-dev if they have something. if they get no response, they come to me and  try to find someone who is able to review it?
17:51:16 <asn> usually when this happens in s27 with david, we just assign the extra review mid-week to each other and we let the other person know it's urgent
17:52:03 <ahf> who is the other person here?
17:52:15 <asn> david
17:52:16 <asn> for me
17:52:18 <ahf> if you assign to each other
17:52:19 <ahf> ah!
17:52:20 <asn> and me, for david
17:52:20 <ahf> right
17:52:31 <gaba> asking directly to the person that you know can review is a good idea
17:53:09 <ahf> yeah, with fallback to going to me, if you don't want to ask directly or if you think anybody can do it
17:53:12 <asn> right
17:53:18 <ahf> everybody OK with that?
17:53:19 <asn> i think that's reasonable
17:54:46 <ahf> nobody have anything to add?
17:55:03 <gaba> not from me
17:55:28 <ahf> does anybody have anything else we need to discuss in the last five minutes ?
17:55:42 <nickm> not I!
17:56:01 <asn> im good
17:56:26 <ahf> great. i am gonna write a summary of what we have talked about here and post on tor-project@ - the summaries should allow people who arent here to quickly get what we have talked about and figure out the actionable items from it. just remember that if you want the raw dirty details of our meetings you still need to read our irc logs
17:56:31 <ahf> cool!
17:56:38 <ahf> i am gonna end the meeting then. remember tea time later today
17:56:41 <ahf> #endmeeting