Distribution Modernization Initiative meeting on Mar 29, 2022
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<p>This meeting:<br>
➤ Is for distribution developers, initiative contributors, the Drupal Association and anyone interested in the initiative.<br>
➤ Usually happens every other Tuesday at 1400 UTC.<br>
➤ Is done over chat.<br>
➤ Happens in threads, which you can follow to be notified of new replies even if you don’t comment in the thread. You may also join the meeting later and participate asynchronously!<br>
➤ Has a public agenda anyone can add to.<br>
➤ *Transcript will be exported and posted* to the agenda issue. For anonymous comments, start with a :bust_in_silhouette: emoji. To take a comment or thread off the record, start with a :no_entry_sign: emoji.</p>
<p>ping: @mixologic @kingdutch @bircher @briangilbert @navneet0693 @Tiago Barreiro de Siqueira @Mohammed Razem @finn @dww @Rajab Natshah @Aaron McHale @alexpott @kreynen (go to the issue of the next meeting to add or remove yourself from the list)</p>
<p>:thankful: I'd also like to take a moment to highlight our initiative sponsor! Discover Global Network has generously stepped forward to provide resources that are allowing the Drupal Association to make the necessary updates to modernize distribution support on Drupal.org. Feel free to check them out at: <a href="https://www.discoverglobalnetwork.com/">https://www.discoverglobalnetwork.com/</a></p>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<h2>0️⃣ Who is here today? Comment in the thread below to introduce yourself and tell us why you are joining us.</h2>
<table>
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<td>hestenet (he/him)</td>
<td>Tim from the Drupal Association helping to organize these initiative meetings.</td>
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<tr>
<td>Rajab Natshah</td>
<td>Rajab, Technical Product Lead at Vardot. A maintainer of the Varbase distributionBe in the loop for latest changes on distro project types</td>
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<td>briangilbert (realityloop) (he/him)</td>
<td>Brian, creator of Foundry. Keeping up to date</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Derek from TEN7. Interested in distro support and collaboration.</td>
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<td>Warped</td>
<td>Dave, co-maintainer in training trying to bring OpenChurch up to date and improved for the future.</td>
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<h2>1️⃣ Do you have any topics to propose for the meeting today? Feel free to propose them in this thread, and then I will give them their own unique threads for discussion. Conversation moving slow? Go ahead and open your own thread in the next numeric order.</h2>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Maybe I should have opened <a href="https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C2THUBAVA/p1648602078403499?thread_ts=1648571925.294659&cid=C2THUBAVA">https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C2THUBAVA/p1648602078403499?thread_ts=1648571925.294659&cid=C2THUBAVA</a> as a new thread?</td>
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</table>
<h2>2️⃣ Drupal.org distro publishing updates:Have started initial work on the packages.drupal.org endpoint publishing code to properly detect project types, so we can vary the logic by project typeSome existing project types (distros, and some general projects) are currently getting non-working entries in the endpoint - will be cleaning those up and publishing them based on the presence of a composer.json (instead of treating like regular modules,etc)</h2>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Cool, thanks for the updates.Hypothetically, if anyone had spare cycles to try to help more this effort forward, where/how could that happen? :wink: (edited)</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Moved to <a href="https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C2THUBAVA/p1648602221134509">https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C2THUBAVA/p1648602221134509</a></td>
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</table>
<h2>3️⃣ If anyone had spare cycles to try to help more this effort forward, where/how could that happen?</h2>
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<td>hestenet (he/him)</td>
<td>That's a good question - one thing we probably need is a good meta issue with some children where folks could start picking up and contributing (cc @alexpott)</td>
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<td>hestenet (he/him)</td>
<td>As clarification @dww was your question related to contributing to the d.o side, the core side, or both?</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Mostly the d.o side of the question. I saw the meeting (late, thanks to $work), and the entire content was:What should we talk about?Update on progress for d.o - starting to start:cricket: :wink:the organizer in me thought “if I was relatively new and didn’t know better, I’d have 0 idea how to contribute to any of this”, which is why I asked.</td>
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<td>hestenet (he/him)</td>
<td>Fair enough. Right now most of the d.o side work has to do with changes to project_composer, which is pretty internal, but we should take a crack at breaking out some more specific issues ourselves..</td>
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</table>
<h2>4️⃣ I’m giving a 5 minute talk about the initiative at Dev Days. What should I say? The thread will contain my current ideas. /cc @dww @hestenet (he/him) @mixologic @kreynen @bircher @kingdutch @briangilbert (realityloop) (he/him) @Rajab Natshah @Warped (picking people who have recently contributed to meetings)</h2>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>Goals:Make it easier for newcomers to Drupal to find distributionsEnable distributions like Commerce Kickstart, Open Social, and Thunder to be used alongside each otherMake it easier for organisations that maintain hundreds of Drupal sites to provide and maintain a starting pointMake it easier to update sites using distributionsImprove distribution support on Drupal.org</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>Who is involved:Hestenet, Drupal AssociationMixologic, Drupal AssociationAre there any other people officially involved?You! :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>Current progressDrupal.org changes, for example, improving the composer endpoint to better support distribution.We’re still in the discussion stage around the other aims - including whether distributions should really just be modules that configure a lot of other modules. We’re struggling with naming - we have super modules or starter kits.(obvs will include issue NIDS but not necessary here)</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>Next steps:Build the initiative teamContinue work on drupal.orgProduce plans for how to deliver on the other goals.</td>
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<td>ronaldtebrake</td>
<td>I think that covers everything I would love to hear, especially considering the amount of time.</td>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>@alexpott I think a bit of history of distros would be interesting, examples of which ones worked out and why :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>I think those goals are a fabulous / concise summary of the pain and the desired glory.Given you only have 5 mins, everything else you laid out looks great. I agree some history could be useful, but only if you have time to spare. I’d rather use spare time in a lightning talk like this to try to recruit interested parties for the future, not further elaborate on the past.</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Side point: I always find it hard when trying to identify “who’s involved” for initiatives like this. Very few people are ever “officially” involved. But if you try to identify them, either you:Give the impression almost no one is involved since you only say the “official” onesTry to untangle “official” vs “heavily unofficial” vs “sorta” involved folks (and inevitably hurt feelings when someone who’s trying to help is left out of your cut)Try to cover everyone which is probably too much noise.I’m not totally sure exactly who’s involved even matters in this context.</td>
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<td>Warped</td>
<td>Link to a page listing everyone, sorted by comments+commits, without categories includes everyone. And you can thank the X number of contributors, so far.</td>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>Yeah we did that for D8MI, it does require some consistent way to identify the discussion and meeting and development issues people used.</td>
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<td>briangilbert (realityloop) (he/him)</td>
<td>@alexpott I think 'starterkit' definitely makes sense for what Foundry aims to be, can't really speak to the others</td>
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<td>mixologic</td>
<td>Maybe "Who's Involved" is better categorically speaking: Members of the core committer team, People from the DA Engineering Team, Maintainers of Distributions, and other interested community members"</td>
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<td>mixologic</td>
<td>Since it more than drives home the point that this is important, and thus people across domains are coming together to make it better.</td>
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<td>Pasqualle</td>
<td>will be the talk recorded? It could be useful.</td>
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<td>bircher</td>
<td>I am sad I can't be there</td>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>@Pasqualle this is part of hte Drupal initiatives keynote next Tuesday at DevDays, I expect it will be recorded :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>Here’s a link to my presentation - <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Jx_tVEQHXNLzPm8SmHBCosu5F9gr8P4R/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107249909203611074029&rtpof=true&sd=true">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Jx_tVEQHXNLzPm8SmHBCosu5F9gr8P4R/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107249909203611074029&rtpof=true&sd=true</a> - feedback more than welcome.</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>Looks great, thanks! Only a few minor nits / points:GOALS: "Enabling distributions to work together" - This seems a little vague. Above, your formulation was "... to be used alongside each other" which seems more to the point. How about: "Allowing multiple distributions to be used on the same project"? Or something similarly specific. "Work together" could mean a lot of things.2. TEAM:The Drupal AssociationThe core committer teamDistribution maintainersYou?I don't really fit in any of those boxes. There might be other folks involved who don't technically maintain any distros or otherwise qualify with that list. Ryan's formulation above had "and other interested community members" which seems great. In this case, a little vagueness seems like a plus. :wink:Thanks again!</td>
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<td>Warped</td>
<td>I thought "You" was intended to cover anyone not already covered. Maybe "Other interested contributors - You?"</td>
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<td>dww</td>
<td>"You?" is meant as a recruiting item. The point of the rest of the slide is "who's already involved?".My point is that "who's already involved" could already be a little more broad to show that for basically any way that a given "you" might self-identify, they will already have other people already involved that they can relate to or identify with...</td>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>@alexpott will take in your final slides to the deck when you give the go-ahead :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>@Gábor Hojtsy (he/him) can I have an hour? I don’t have anything funky like videos or animations - so the default 20 seconds will work just fine.</td>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>Definitely :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>@Gábor Hojtsy (he/him) my slides are ready</td>
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<td>alexpott</td>
<td>@dww thank you for the feedback - I’ve incorporated your suggestions</td>
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</table>
<h2><a href="https://dri.es/drupal-distributions">https://dri.es/drupal-distributions</a> is a pretty interesting read from 2006. I’m not sure that we’ve quite managed to foster the collaboration between distributions that was envisaged. I know that distributions have definitely made major contributions back to both core and contrib over the years.</h2>
<table>
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<td>Gábor Hojtsy (he/him)</td>
<td>A short retrospective on that would be good as a conversation starter / call to action :slightly_smiling_face:</td>
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<td>bircher</td>
<td>Ah it has been a while since I read that post. I used to refer to it as the original vision that distributions are a good thing to have.</td>
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<td>gusaus</td>
<td>This post from 2010 might be worth a fresh look and call to action. While there are better tools (like the Funding module in the works), it seems like sustaining distributions is still a big challenge all these years later. (edited)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Participants:</p>
<p>hestenet, kreynen, Rajab Natshah, briangilbert (realityloop) (he/him), dww, Warped, alexpott, ronaldtebrake, Gábor Hojtsy, Mixologic, Pasqualle, bircher, gusaus</p>
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