meeting - Notes from meeting 25th Sept

Signed-off-by: Daniel Silverstone <dsilvers@digital-scurf.org>

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+[[!meta title="Iteration planning: September 25th"]]
+[[!tag meeting]]
+[[!meta date="Sat, 25 Sep 2021 11:30 +0100"]]
+
+[[!toc levels=2]]
+
+# Review of actions from last meeting
+
+There were no actions from the previous meeting.
+
+# Review of the iteration that has ended
+
+[[!milestone 35]] had the following issued closed:
+
+- [[!issue 205]] -- Newer pandoc lacks `--filter pandoc-citeproc`
+- [[!issue 216]] -- Newer `state` crate available
+
+The following issues remain open:
+
+- [[!issue 96]] -- Error for "do not understand binding" should say in
+  what file the not-understood binding use is found
+- [[!issue 196]] -- Python runner stops on first failure
+- [[!issue 198]] -- Unify language handling for multi-impl-lang test suites
+- [[!issue 207]] -- Release process is too manual, CI build of release .deb changes files
+- [[!issue 213]] -- "Failure: document has no title" when there's duplicate keys
+- [[!issue 218]] -- Automatable parts of release process are manual
+- [[!issue 219]] -- Needs a release after 0.2.2 to test release automation
+
+We have made reasonable progress. Daniel's work on multi-language documents is
+not yet ready for even proofreading, let alone reviewing.
+
+We moved the remaining issues, next milestone ([[!milestone 36]]) and then
+closed off this iteration.
+
+In addition in this iteration now closing we completed some work to enable
+`codegen` to use `pulldown_cmark` instead of `pandoc` making the dependency
+chain for generating the test suites lighter. This work was done by Lars
+primarily, with a little help from Daniel, and was covered in [[!mr 213]],
+[[!mr 214]], and [[!mr 216]].
+
+# Review of the repositories
+
+There is one in-progress MR in the `subplot` repository
+
+- [[!mr 218]] -- Add `-k` to Python test runner - this needs review from Daniel
+  And it will address [[!issue 196]] once merged.
+
+The `subplot-container-images` and `subplot-web` repositories do not
+have MRs or extra branches.
+
+There was a spare branch in `subplot` called `cmark-parser` which we removed
+as it was either an earlier version of the work mentioned above, or else was
+simply stale. There is also the `subplot-rust` branch which Daniel is keeping
+around until he has completed the work on [[!issue 198]].
+
+We triggered the pipeline to build the container image for Subplot.
+All `subplot` pipelines are clean.
+
+# Current goal (goal 2)
+
+Subplot provides a set of libraries with identical capabilities in each of the
+supported languages. Python remains a supported language. Rust is promoted to
+supported-language status. Subplot will be tested with all supported languages.
+In addition, any quality of life improvements which can be done shall be done.
+This goal will be considered complete when a release of Subplot has been made
+with the unified language handling support complete.
+
+# Issue review
+
+This time we reviewed only the recently changed open issues, except those tagged
+`someday-maybe`. We updated the issues as we reviewed with any new comments or
+decisions. Notably we made the following changes:
+
+- [[!issue 96]] -- "do not understand binding" error. Lars has updated the issue
+  with a note that the code is a mess around generating this error. At least
+  in one place where we produce the error we don't then pass it up to the caller,
+  so we need to review what's going on.
+  We chose to drop this from the milestone, and from the goal, so that it can
+  be tackled when we refactor for better lint/warn/error support.
+- [[!issue 196]] -- "python runner stops on first failure". Lars has a merge
+  request open to fix this issue, so it is in the next iteration.
+- [[!issue 198]] -- "language unification". Daniel explained the current state
+  of the merged support for polyglot bindings, and that he had an abortive
+  attempt at solving the polyglot documents problem but that was abandoned in
+  favour of being able to merge Lars' work on `pulldown_cmark` support.
+- [[!issue 207]] -- "release process too manual" - we left it as it, assigned
+  to the new milestone.
+- [[!issue 213]] -- "failure: document has no title" - Lars had a go at working
+  on this, but he doesn't want to do the work as proposed (changing pandoc
+  arguments) because long-term we want to move to not using Pandoc to parse the
+  Subplot document itself. As such we've demilestoned it, unassigned it from
+  Lars, and added the `blocked` label.
+- [[!issue 218]] -- "automatable release parts are too manual" is carried into
+  our next iteration and left assigned to Lars.
+- [[!issue 219]] -- "making a release ..." we can't make this 0.2.2 so we're
+  going to call it 0.3.0 instead since there's a breaking change (polyglot
+  bindings) and a breaking change (cmark for codegen).
+- [[!issue 239]] -- "in metadata, author is a single string" -- this is because
+  in the cmark handler for metadata, the author field must be a single string.
+  Pandoc accepts either a single string or a list of strings, so we should
+  improve our cmark metadata handler to support this too.
+  We assigned this to Lars and put this into the milestone having decided to
+  have a go at trying to support the Pandoc approach by means of an `enum`.
+- [[!issue 238]] -- "doesn't support `abstract` in metadata" - we discussed
+  this and Lars has assigned it to himself to have a go at in the new milestone.
+- [[!issue 236]] -- "codegen on a document without scenarios should be an error"
+  which was opened by Daniel during the last iteration. We discussed implementation
+  a little, and then assigned it to Daniel and put it into the milestone.
+  We also did some label triage.
+- [[!issue 235]] -- "subplot.md is too long" - We added `active discussion` and
+  `unhelpful` labels along with `someday-maybe` on the assumption that we will
+  obviously be reviewing **all** issues before a 1.0 release.
+- [[!issue 220]] -- "generated rust test programs are hard to debug" - we will
+  probably want to have a discussion about what should be traced at what level,
+  and ensure that everything coming from subplotlib itself logs that way.
+  Daniel mentioned trying the `tracing-test` library but that will need some
+  changes before we can use it. We also added `actively-discussed`.
+- [[!issue 227]] -- "workflow for using codegen from `build.rs`" We intend to
+  consider the best workflows and then write stuff up on the issue when we
+  come up with points.
+- [[!issue 229]] -- "Licence clarification needed" - We agreed that:
+  1. Subplot, Subplotlib, and any python or shell libraries remain under the GPL 3.0.
+  2. We add a libgcc style exception clause which permits any code from subplot
+     and associated libraries which ends up linked to or embedded in any test suite
+     to not be infected by the GPL.
+  3. This is critical to goal 2.
+
+# Plan for next iteration
+
+We opened [[!milestone 36]] to cover this iteration, with the
+following issues:
+
+- [[!issue 196]] -- Python runner stops on first failure
+- [[!issue 198]] -- Unify language handling for multi-impl-lang test suites
+- [[!issue 207]] -- Release process is too manual, CI build of release
+  .deb changes files
+- [[!issue 218]] -- Automatable parts of release process are manual
+- [[!issue 219]] -- Needs a release after 0.3.0 to test release
+  automation
+- [[!issue 236]] -- Codegen on zero-scenarios should be an error
+- [[!issue 238]] -- abstract in metadata
+- [[!issue 239]] -- supporting multiple authors in metadata
+
+# Other business
+
+- Metadata parsing - lax or strict. We discussed during the issue review.
+  Daniel proposed a `pandoc:` key in the metadata which can contain an
+  arbitrary key/value map to be passed directly to pandoc.
+  We decided to see how complex that might be for now, and if it's not easy
+  then we will just add more strict support until we are ready to replace
+  the docgen parse pipeline with the cmark pipeline.
+  We agree that it's important to be strict in what we accept for `subplot`
+  itself. Early error messages that we are in control of are better for
+  our users. We cannot have a complete list of everything Pandoc can deal
+  with, especially because some of it goes into the latex backend.
+- We discussed the use of subplot in the Sequoia-PGP project and we agreed that
+  we have sufficient issues filed for now. Daniel suggested a label for
+  issues which are blocking high profile projects from adopting Subplot. Lars
+  has taken an action to do this and label up some of the issues.
+- Regarding the media repo, we agreed to hold off for now, but keep the AOB.
+  When we have made a decision to present then we will look again at this.
+- Regarding how we convince others to use Subplot - Daniel explained that he
+  feels that the best way is a combination of demonstrating by means of using
+  Subplot, and then presentations at conferences. Lars feels that he did not
+  communicate well why Subplot is worth using when he tried to present to `sq`
+  testing. Lars could also write blog posts about using Subplot for Obnam.
+  Once Sequoia or Rustup is using Subplot then we want blog posts on those
+  projects.
+- A useful takeaway is that we need to talk about Subplot more and with a wider
+  variety of potential users, in order that we can collate useful information on
+  how to persuade people of Subplot's usefulness.
+- We do not know yet about `cargo release`
+
+# Actions
+
+- Lars to create a label for blocking-high-profile-projects (name to be decided
+  by Lars when he does it) and to label at least the Sequoia-PGP blockers if not
+  also anything else he thinks may be blocking projects such as Rustup.