Minutes of Edinburgh Release Meeting, 27 Nov 2006

TOC and Agenda

Logistics, Participants, IRC log

• Date: Monday, 27 Nov 2006 21:00 GMT
• IRC Channel: #twiki_edinburgh
• Participants: KennethLavrsen (Lavr), PeterThoeny (PeterThoeny), HaraldJoerg (HaraldJoerg), logger for SvenDowideit (SvenDowideit), AntonioTerceiro (terceiro), ThomasWeigert (tweigert)
• Not present but usually are: KwangErnLiew (ktwilight), ArthurClemens (ArthurClemens), AndyGraybeal (AndyGraybeal), SteffenPoulsen (SteffenPoulsen), Benjamin Jones (Dzaster), TravisBarker (TravisBarker), MartinCleaver (MartinCleaver), OliverKrueger (OliverKrueger), CrawfordCurrie (CDot), WillNorris (wbniv), LynnwoodBrown (Lynnwood), MichaelDaum (MichaelDaum), SamHasler (Flenser), RafaelAlvarez (Soronthar)
• Facilitated by PeterThoeny (PeterThoeny)
• Notes taken by KennethLavrsen (Lavr)
• Meeting Minutes: EdinburghMinutes2006x11x27.txt

1. Review Previous Action Items

• Kenneth: PostDakarTrackingAndDiscussion - review and enhance
  • Kenneth added notes and altered the topic.
• Thomas W.: TemplatePathIsCounterintuitive - give overview of what has been implemented to we can give the feedback requested
  • The detailed commented code is on TemplatePathIsCounterintuitive, about 2/3 down.
  • This reimplementation has revealed that new and not obviously good changes to the template lookup algorithm have been made when going from Cairo to Dakar, see Bugs:Item3181 and TemplatePathBuginTWiki4x00. A comparison of the Athens through Dakar lookup algorithm is given in TemplatePathBuginTWiki4x00. It would be wise to review and come to some conclusion.
  • The current algorithm has been reimplemented and checked in. It has now been running on Bugs for a week. New test cases have been added. This new algorithm allows for users to configure the search path to their needs, via the $TWiki::cfg{TemplatePath} variable. By default it realizes the Dakar algorithm.
  • This algorithm implements a feature request by several users, in particular MartinCleaver.
  • I still think we should revisit the two exception cases that have been added in Dakar. -- TW
• TemplateAffectsTextarea:
  • Sven D: Add a proposal to meet Thomas actual need with existing features.
  • Thomas: Evaluate and see if this meets his need.
    • No working suggestions by Sven and Crawford have been forthcoming.
    • The code implementing this feature has been checked in for further review and has been running on Bugs for one week now. It uses the syntax suggested by Kenneth.
    • This change does not affect anything unless the %STARTTEXT% and %ENDTEXT% pseudo tags are used in the view template surrounding the existing %TEXT% pseudo tag.
    • This style of manipulating templates is also used to implement search, so there is nothing unusual about using pseudo tags.
    • The use case that this feature supports is, I believe, important for TWikiApplications and widely used in our installation.
    • Kenneth/Sven have noted that code was checked in without an agreement from release meeting.
  • All: Give Thomas more feedback.
• Clarify process with respect to when work items should be checked in.
  • Background: My understanding was that the checkin is a staging area for code merge which allows the community to examine proposed contributions in the context of a running system. The merge into the actual release would be conducted during the release process based on release meeting decisions. This understanding was confirmed by that last release meeting there was a complaint that the code for TemplatePathIsCounterintuitive was not checked in and thus not visible. However, this wee there was concern that TemplateAffectsTextarea was checked in (following this understanding of the process) without approval from the release meeting. -- TW

2. Review Proposed Features of TWiki 4.1

• Desired outcome: Clarify open question and decide on inclusion/exclusion of features

• Current status can be seen in WhatIsIn04x01.

• TemplatePathIsCounterintuitive: We keep the code and test it carefully. Need to review if more doc work is needed.
• TemplateAffectsTextarea: Accepted: 3 votes to 0. The decision is to keep the checked in code but keep it as UNDOCUMENTED feature so we can later replace it by better implementation. Thomas to add note in code warning that feature may be removed again.

3. TWiki 4.1 Release Timing

• Desired outcome: Set tentative date of TWiki 4.1 Release

• Update:
  • Beta1 does not fulfill the main purpose: To test the new configure extension installer, because of bugs that prevents it from running. Some of them have been fixed. But a beta2 has not been released because of Bugs:Item3155 (Build script assigns the wrong file access rights to files in extensions). As it looks now it is not likely that 4.1 gets released in 2006.
  • We have round 100 open bugs and very slow pace getting them closed. People check-in plugins and enhancements. But few bug fixes. Noone have referred to beta 1 in bug reports. Did anyone test it?

• Meeting decisions
  • Build script problem in Bugs:Item3155 needs to be resolved. Kenneth will build beta2 the minute it is fixed. It was suggested to ask Sven if he had time to fix it.
  • Peter and Kenneth see the CPAN dependency that prevents many from using the new extension installer in configure as a release blocker. Harald agreed on issue but not as release blocking issue.
  • Peter, Kenneth and Harald agreed that the right spec for configure was
    • zip format should be default assuming a fixed set of access rights for the different directories.
    • Use CPAN unzip function and fall back to system unzip if CPAN lib not available.
    • Use lwp for downloading and fall back to TWiki::Net::getUrl if lwp is not available.
    • Kenneth proposed as 4.1 compromize to keep tgz format and accept lwp and just implement the fallback from Archive::Tar to 'tar -zxf'. Claiming that it would reduce the number of installation requireing support fro 95% (guess) to 5% (guess) because then it would run on all modern Linux boxes.

• For records, decisions at EdinburghReleaseMeeting2006x10x30:
  • Feature freeze starting from 30 Oct 2006
  • Track new ideas in TWikiFeature04x02
  • The 14 day auto accept rule is suspended until 4.1 is released to give focus on bug fixing.
  • Code freeze about one week after beta - then only bug fixes allowed
  • RC1 2 weeks after beta

Action Items

• Thomas: Move config setting for TemplatePathIsCounterintuitive to "miscellaneous settings" section in configure so it is not with the settings you setup as the first installation step.
• Thomas: Update TWikiTemplates for the enhancement to Template path.
• Peter: Create TWikiTemplatesSupplement, a parallel to TWikiSkinsSupplement for templates; and link to it from TWikiTemplates
• All, especially Arthur and Michael: Thomas would like feedback on the TemplatePathBuginTWiki4x00 topic.
• Thomas: Add small note in code implementing STARTTEXT and STOPTEXT that the feature is temporary and may be removed again.
• Unassigned: Fix build script
• Unassigned: Fix configure CPAN dependencies.
• Kenneth: Release beta2 when build script is fixed.

IRC Log

• EdinburghMinutes2006x11x27.txt: Edinburgh Meeting Minutes 2006-11-27

Back to: EdinburghRelease

Comments / Feedback

Question regarding documentation of the template search path: In the current document, as checked in (not Dakar but in 7391 by CC, see Bugs:Item905), it is stated that

• templates/web/script.skin.tmpl
• templates/web/script.tmpl

are deprecated (note that Bugs:Item905 is not at all related to what was checked in there). Please advise as to whether these have in fact been deprecated, so that I can properly document.

Note that with the configurable search path, deprecation is not a problem, as those users who really want those locations can always put them into the search path.

I do agree with the comment in the documentation that web-specific templates should be stored in TWiki topics instead (or in pub, using the configurable search path, if so prefered).

-- ThomasWeigert - 28 Nov 2006