[[!meta title="Iteration planning: February 27 – March 12"]]
[[!meta date="Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:00:00 +0200"]]
[[!tag meeting]]

[[!toc levels=2]]

# Assessment of the iteration that has ended

[previous iteration]: /blog/2022/02/12/planning
[tracing]: https://crates.io/crates/tracing

The following issues were picked for the [previous iteration][]:

* [[!issue 133]] -- _No feature table comparing scenario runners from different codegen templates_
  - Daniel completed this.
* [[!issue 269]] -- _`./check` should set a template when running `docgen`_
  - Daniel completed this.
* [[!issue 221]] -- _Command line tool has insufficient logging_
  - Lars made no progress and is blocked on understanding [tracing][] crate.
* [[!issue 248]] -- _In Rust runcmd, write exit, stdout and especially stderr upon failure_
  - Lars made no progress and is blocked on understanding [tracing][] crate.

Additionally, the following actions were decided on:

- Daniel is to prepare an MR about the talk for `subplot-web`
  - This didn't happen.
- Lars is to deal with the webserver changes needed for `subplot.tech`
  - Done: the old site now redirects all URLs to new site.
- Lars will write an MR for the website change for `subplot-web`
  - Done: The new site doesn't link to the old site, except in old
    blog posts, which aren't worth changing.

Furthermore, we did this:

* Lars changed the `subplot-container-images` repository to trigger a
  build automatically on Friday evenings. This saves us from having to
  remember to do that manually every meeting.

Overall, we made a some progress, which is all we demand from
ourselves on a hobby project.

# Discussion and decisions

## Moving meeting agenda items to the issue tracker.

Lars proposed a new order of topics in the agenda, and that we move
recurring discussion topics to the issue tracker. This should let us
avoid copying items from meeting note to meeting note. Daniel agreed,
so we did that during the meeting.

We created a label
[recurring-agenda-item](https://gitlab.com/subplot/subplot/-/issues?sort=updated_desc&state=opened&label_name[]=recurring-agenda-item).
We created or labelled issues:

* [[!issue 119]] -- _Subplot is in not in Debian unstable_
* [[!issue 272]] -- _Migrate project to issue-based iteration meetings_
* [[!issue 273]] -- _Perform whole-codebase review and cleanup_

## Scheduling the main repository CI job

We discussed whether it might be worth making the CI job for the main
repository also run on schedule, maybe an hour after the container
image one. We decided it'd be worth doing. Lars did that: the schedule
is that it happens on Saturday now well in advance of the bi-weekly
Subplot meeting.

## Getting Subplot into Debian

[[!issue 119]] covers this. We added the following comment:

> We should investigate what is missing from Debian which we depend
> upon, and decide if we can either mitigate that dependency, or would
> need to ask for that to be packaged as well. Perhaps we can
> investigate if there's a way to automate the detection of missing
> dependencies such that we could have a pipeline job which ran on
> main to tell us the state of play.
>
> We are not yet ready to file  an RFP bug to get Subplot packaged for
> Debian. It  will happen after we  think we won’t be  making breaking
> changes anymore. We probably want to do a review of the dependencies
> as well, to make packaging easier.

## Release plan for this iteration

We plan on making the next release after the current goal is done, and
then make a release pretty much every iteration. We've gotten badly
out of habit of making releases.

## Review of the whole code base of Subplot

We created [[!issue 273]], and don't plan to do anything about this
until after goal 3 is done.

## Reaching out for feedback

We won't be reaching out for feedback until goal 3 is done. We didn't
open issue for this, to avoid naming people in public.

## A media repository

Regarding the `media` repository question - we believe this is
premature at this point. We've removed this from the agenda. We'll
make a repository when there's a need. Until then there's no need to
keep discussing it.

## Convincing others to try Subplot

We had an issue for this, but it's now closed. We dropped this from
the agenda.

## Blog post

We decided to blog about the FOSDEM talk, the new domain, and the new
Matrix room.

## Subplot documentation

We discussed Subplot documentation and opened [[!issue 274]].

# Repository review

We reviewed the open issues, merge requests, and CI pipelines for all
the projects in the Obnam group on gitlab.com.

## The `subplot` repository

There were 58 open issues, of which 28 were not tagged
`someday-maybe`. We reviewed the ones that had been updated since the
previous meeting, and made the following changes:

* [[!issue 270]] -- _Test_
  - deleted, was a test issue
* [[!issue 250]] -- _subplotlib could do with unit tests_
  - the new MR from Daniel fixes some of this; we will review the
    situation after that is merged
* [[!issue 214]] -- _Lacks example and docs for using Rust step
  functions_
  - Daniel will do an example
* [[!issue 271]] -- _`subplotlib` should be reviewed for inclusion of
  attributes such as `#[must_use]`_
  - created as a split-off issue from 263, put into current goal
  - Daniel will review
* [[!issue 263]] -- _What is a good way to include Rust step functions
  in the crate, when testing a program written in Rust?_
  - removed from goal 2
  - we will review this after the current goal

There was one open merge request:

* [[!mr 250]] -- _(subplotlib): Improve step library documentation_
  - Daniel opened this just before the meeting, Lars will review it soon

There were open, old branches:

* `fix-133` -- had been merged, was now deleted manually
* `subplot-rust` -- kept until the current goal is finished
* `docgen-cmark` -- kept until the next goal is finished

CI pipelines are OK.

## The `subplot-web` repository

There were no open issues, no open merge requests, no extra branches,
and no CI enabled.

## The `subplot-container-images` repository

There was one open issue.

* [subplot-container-images
  #2](https://gitlab.com/subplot/subplot-container-images/-/issues/2)
  -- _There is no Docker image for using Subplot_
  - we're not going to work on this until we stop making breaking
    changes

There were no open merge requests, no extra branches, and the latest
run of CI was successful. (That's the run that was automatically
triggered yesterday.)

# New iteration

## Current goal (not changed this iteration)

The current development goal is:

> 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.

This is represented as label
[`goal:2`](https://gitlab.com/subplot/subplot/-/issues?sort=created_asc&state=opened&label_name[]=goal::2)
in the GitLab.com issue tracker.

## Issues for this iteration

We collect issues for this iteration in [[!milestone 45]]. We decided
to not make a release.

Lars intends to work on:

- [[!mr 250]] -- _(subplotlib): Improve step library documentation_
- [[!issue 221]] -- _Command line tool has insufficient logging_
- [[!issue 248]] -- _In Rust runcmd, write exit, stdout and especially stderr upon failure_

Daniel intends to work on:

- [[!issue 214]] -- _Lacks example and docs for using Rust step functions_
- [[!issue 271]] -- _`subplotlib` should be reviewed for inclusion of attributes such as `#[must_use]`_


# Actions

* Lars and Daniel to blog about the FOSDEM talk, the new domain, and
  the new Matrix room.

# Meeting participants

* Daniel Silverstone
* Lars Wirzenius