Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Checkin archive/20191211


2019-12-11 edit

Vacations/Important dates edit

https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/HR_Corner/Holiday_List
How to do it
  • December 1–2: Jeena
  • December 6: Lars (Finnish Independence Day)
  • December 23: James, Brennen, Greg (need to put it in Namely)
  • December 23–January 2: Lars
  • December 24–31 (Christmas): Staff with reqs (everyone? (yes))
  • 1 January (New Year's Day): Staff with reqs, Lars
  • 2–3 January: James
  • 20 January (Martin Luther King Jr. Day): Staff with reqs
  • 17 February (Presidents' Day): Staff with reqs
  • 9 March (DST+1 day): Staff with reqs
  • 24 April (Not-Easter): Staff with reqs
  • 25 May (Memorial Day): Staff with reqs

Rotating positions edit

Train edit

Maniphest query for deployment blocker tasks: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/s3KW8bpsXhYF/#R


  • 25 Nov - wmf.8 [Group0 on Tuesday] - Brennen + Mukunda (Thanksgiving)
  • 2 Dec - wmf.8 part 2 [Wednesday Group1 + Thursday Group2] - Brennen + Dan
  • 9 Dec - wmf.10 - Dan + James
  • 16 Dec - wmf.11 - James + Jeena
  • 23 Dec - wmf.12 - No Train or any other deploys (Winterval)
  • 30 Dec - wmf.13 - No Train or any other deploys (Still Winterval)
  • 6 Jan - wmf.14 - Jeena + Lars
  • 13 Jan - wmf.15 - Lars + Antoine

SoS edit

  • Aug 14 onward: Zeljko 🎸 🎷 \o/

Team Business edit

Incoming/Needs attention edit

Offsite Actions edit

  • 🏂   In progress [thcipriani] figure out what part of team meeting to move to phab
  • [Dan + Jeena] add Blubber to local dev
    • -> Q3 goals?
  • [Mukunda] Phab to local dev
    • -> Q3 goals?
  • [thcipriani] lunch and learns
  • [thcipriani/greg] Program/Project managers
    • [JDF] highlighted this to Grace, so she expects outreach to understand the role.


Q3 (Jan–Mar 2020) Goal Planning is upon us! edit

Reduce Complexity of Platform Maintain and evolve developer tooling, testing infrastructure, validation environments, deployment infrastructure, and supporting processes

  • Localdev mw/core (Brennen + Jeena)
  • Gerrit 2.15 -> 2.16 (con't) (Thcipriani + Dan + Antoine)
  • Phabricator: eliminate elasticsearch for phabricator search (Mukunda + Brennen) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T230787

Maintain and improve the Continuous Integration and Testing services

  • Quibble extension.json parsing + migration (James + Antoine + Jeena)
  • Pipelinelib documentation (Dan + Lars)
  • Migrate zuul deployment to scap3 (Antoine + Mukunda)
  • "integration" Cloud VPS project jessie deprecation (Antoine + James + Jeena)
  • Unnamed "New CI work" TBD after meeting with SRE (Dan + Lars)

Developers have a consistent and dependable deployment service

  • Scap: Use static php array files for l10n cache instead of CDB (Dan + Lars)
  • Pipeline migrations (con't) (Dan + Lars + James)

thcipriani: bold future james: I prefer task heierarchy, things get ignored in a project workboard, project tags theoretically are for extended period rather than a 1-off project mukunda: we could use milestones instead antoine: I have been using subprojects for short-term projects -- I like looking at a workboard


Timespent spreadsheet edit

For the avoidance of doubt: fill out the sheet week number for the previous week

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YS_2eUQWUOnygshMfxgGPu93GKGCO5t00yjUREQ5B-I/edit#gid=244664871

    • reminder: your time spent doesn't need to total to 100%

Book club edit

Monthly reflection on accomplishments - December '19 edition edit

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Monthly_notable_accomplishments
Add as you have them!

Scrum of Scrums for next week edit

Internal team notes, not for pasting into the SoS notes edit

Incoming from last week (aka this morning) edit

  • Blocked by:
  • Blocking:
    • Site Reliability Engineering - Requesting follow-up from Releng team regarding Gerrit/Zuul Prometheus metrics gerrit:479139
  • Updates:
Callouts edit
  • Release Engineering - December 23-January 3rd - No deploys (including train), Holiday break

Outgoing next week edit

  • Blocked by:
  • Blocking:
  • Updates:
    • Train Health
Callouts edit
  • Release Engineering - December 23-January 3rd - No deploys (including train), Holiday break

Train status and happenings edit

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Roles#Train_Conductor

Standup! edit

Antoine edit

Last week edit

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
  • Blockers

Other edit


Brennen edit

Last week edit

This week edit

Other edit

  • Shifting some time around this / next week for end-of-year medical appointments and such


Dan edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • Learning how to document more effectively
    • Used branch.py to cut the wmf branch yesterday \o/
      • Thanks to Mukunda for his work on that script!
    • Noemie (daughter) got to sleep on her own and slept for 12 hours straight last night
  • Worst thing
  • What I planned vs did
    •   Done Come up with questions for SRE re: third-party vs. WMF K8s platform
    •   In progress Reaquaint myself with scap codebase and look at ways to support PHP-based l10n
    •  N Not done Talk to Brennen about pairing tooling research and experimentation
    •   In progress PipelineLib/Blubber user documentation
    •   Done (not needed) PipelineLib git clone improvements (depth and parallel clone support)
    •  N Not done Tooling to simplify easier taskification of daily work
    •  N Not done Taskify the above
  • Unplannned

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • Train
    • Continue improving Pipelinelib + Blubber documentation
    • Establish a collaborative RelEng/SRE process for refining Seakeeper proposal
  • Blockers

Other edit


Greg edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • Lost power for an hour, got to talk to some neighbors for a bit
  • Worst thing
    • I'm trying to be positive, yo
  • What I planned vs did
    • MTP/OKR metrics working group - going well
    • leveling/job codes - done for now
  • Unplannned
    • NewCI discussion with Erika

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • TechConf review, but that will most likely slip to next week, given my week is 4 days long in December
    • NewCI discussion with SRE (done)
    • MTP/OKR conversation with Birgit re renaming/titling the "Reduce Complexity" Key Deliverable
    • TechConf retro tomorrow morning with the ProgramCommittee
    • oh right, US Benefits confirmation
  • Blockers
    • time, self inflicted (taking off Fridays)
    • Rowan's 8th bday today

Other edit

James edit

Last week edit

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • Train support & other UBNs.
    • CI metrics work.
    • Removal of Ruby daily selenium jobs, as part of contint1001 jessie->buster work.
    • Liaison between teams re. competing deployment thoughts.
    • More runbooks documentation.
  • Blockers

Other edit

  • Next week I'll be working from London, not San Francisco.


Jeena edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • judo :D :D :D
  • Worst thing
    • The dark days are here
    • sick again
  • What I planned vs did
    •   Done Get caught up
    •  N Not done key signing
  • Unplannned
    • Code Reviews
    • Updating patchsets
    • Book club
    • Reading
    • interview planning
    • all hands registration
    • benefits registration
    • local dev meeting

This week edit

Other edit


Lars edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • Saw the Sun one day, for a whole half hour.
  • Worst thing
    • Only saw the Sun for half an hour.
  • What I planned vs did
    •   Done Write and send out howto for signing PGP keys. phab:T239829
    • Read TechConf and offsite notes, extract any useful bits.
    •   Done Ponder SRE input on new CI from TechConf. Discuss with Tyler, Dan.
    • Do an Argo test deployment.
    •   Done Start work on documenting pipelinelib so it can be re-implemented for new CI.
    • Book club.
  • Unplanned
    • n/a

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • Do a first draft of a threat model for CI
    • Read TechConf and offsite notes, extract any useful bits.
    • Do an Argo test deployment.
      • Meeting before this one remove my mental block and gave me hope
  • Blockers

Other edit

  • Less than two weeks until solstice! Days will be getting longer again!


Mukunda edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • Phabricator is on phab1001, Debian 10, failover very is well tested (monthly accomplishment!)
  • Worst thing
    • Phabricator notification server is (still) broken and will likely remain that way until DZahn returns from vacation
  • What I planned vs did
    •   Done Finish my phabricator redundancy OKRs
    •  N Not done Look into open-sourcing phabricator-antivandalism as I finally have the OK from our security team.
  • Unplannned
    • Added a "Backup train conductor" custom field to Maniphest (monthly accomplishment! -- also, awesome!)

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • Talk to brennen about phabricator pairing
    • Work on code review working group stuff: patch triage / code review office hours
    • Task grooming
  • Blockers
    • Need DZahn to be back from travel / vacation.

Other edit


Tyler edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • team is awesome
  • Worst thing
    • end of year brain dissolving
  • What I planned vs did
    •   Done Wrangle hiring loop
    •   Done ish Build SPoF program
    •   Done ish Q3 planning kickoff
    •  N Not done Do keysigning!
    •   Done Register for all-hands (everyone!)
  • Unplannned

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • benefits in namely
    • Q3 planning/SPoF/Changes to this meeting
  • Blockers

Other edit


Zeljko edit

Last week edit

  • Best thing
    • talked at a local tech meetup abot software testing anti-patterns 🎸
  • Worst thing
    • safeguard 🤦‍♂️
  • What I planned vs did
    • ❌ work on testing related questions for interviews with developers ❓
    • ✅ expense report (Coupa)
    • ✅ prepare to close my company: paperwork, meet with accountant... 👔
    • ❌ read article for book club (can not attend book club) 📖
    • ✅ prepare talk about software testing anti patterns for local tech meetup 🎤
    • ✅ use more emoji 🤠
  • Unplannned

This week edit

  • What I plan to do
    • read article for book club 📖
    • follow up on various tasks from techconf 👨‍💻
  • Blockers

Other edit

  • I'm buying a Synology NAS for months now, hopefully I'll actually buy it this week 💾