Developer Satisfaction Survey/2024/Deployment
📖 Developer Satisfaction 2024 Report
🚂 Deployment
edittl;dr
- ↑ Higher deployment satisfaction – 68% of respondents said deployments are easy and pain-free, compared to 31% in 2021.
- ↓ Lower Kubernetes satisfaction – 42% of respondents said they were satisfied with using Wikimedia Kubernetes, compared to 54% last year.
- Positive feedback – Respondents shouted-out
scap backportin the open answers.
# Deployment use in the past year
We asked survey takers, “In the past year, have you used the Wikimedia deployment train or backport windows?”
- A majority (65.9%) of respondents said they did not use either
- 18.6% said they used both
- 10.2% said they used backport windows only
- 5.4% said they used Wikimedia deployment train only
# Deployment use in the past year (by role)
MediaWiki Core developers was the only group with more respondents saying they used deployment train and/or backport windows than not. For all other roles, the majority reported using neither.
# Deployment satisfaction
We asked survey takers how much they agreed with the following statement: “Deployments using the Wikimedia train or backport windows are easy and pain-free.”
- A majority (68%) said they agreed that these deployments are easy and pain-free
- Up from 31% since 2021, the last time we asked this question.
- 18% said they neither agreed nor disagreed
- 13% said they disagreed
- 1% was unsure
# Kubernetes use in the past year
We asked survey takers, “In the past year, have you deployed software to Wikimedia’s production Kubernetes infrastructure?”
- The majority (71.9%) of respondents said that they did not deploy software to Wikimedia Kubernetes in the past year
- 16.2% said that they did
- 12.0% were unsure
# Kubernetes satisfaction
We asked survey takers, “How satisfied are you with software deployment using Wikimedia’s production Kubernetes infrastructure?”
Of the survey takers who had used Wikimedia’s production Kubernetes infrastructure during the past year,
- Less than half (42%) of respondents said they were satisfied with using Wikimedia Kubernetes
- 36% were unsure
- 11% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
- 11% were dissatisfied
# Kubernetes ease of deployment
We asked survey takers, “How much would you agree with the following statement: Deployments using Wikimedia’s Kubernetes infrastructure are easy and pain-free?”
Of the survey takers who had used Wikimedia’s production Kubernetes infrastructure during the past year,
- 31% agreed that deployments were easy and pain-free
- 26% neither agreed nor disagreed
- 23% disagreed
- 20% were unsure
# Feedback
We asked survey takers, “Please share any other feedback you may have about the Wikimedia deployment train and backport windows” Some themes emerged from the answers.
Scap backport is great
The most common single theme in open answers (18%—6 out of 34) was scap backport is nice.
scap backport was an evolutionary leap in developer experience, since then doing backports has been very pleasant
Each deployment is slow
The second most common answer (12%—4 out of 34) was that the time it takes to deploy a change is slower recently.
The new scap tool is excellent and takes away much of the pain. Still, the deployment time is even worse than before perhaps to needing to build both the containerized and legacy environments