User:Bryan Hilderbrand/Meeting Notes (10FEB)

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Attendees

  • Ad Strack van Schijndel
  • Bryan Hilderbrand
  • Cindy Cicalese
  • Lex Sulzer
  • Rich Evans
  • Yaron Koren

Meeting notes for MediaWiki "Infrastructure" (Project Canasta) Discussion (Wed Feb 03 16:30-17:30 UTC 2020)


Notes

The meeting voice transcription is available on the talk page.

  1. Yaron I hope this isn't just me, ideally other people will use this
    • As a note, the project has the following parts so far (as defined on the Project Canasta on MediaWiki.org):
      1. A system that allows for creating a "starter installation" of MediaWiki plus some specified set of extensions and skins, possibly using Composer.
      2. A system that allows for publishing a downloadable version of this installation - and potentially the software environment around it, such as Apache, MySQL and PHP - using a tool like Docker or Ansible. (See /Infrastructure solution.)
      3. A mechanism to allow for installing wiki pages onto the resulting wiki, possibly using the Page Exchange extension.
      4. A set of wiki page packages to fit the various decided-on use cases.
  2. Rich I have an investment in Meza, I'm willing to switch as long as there's something better.
    • I'm also very interested in the "data structures" marketplace.
  3. Cindy I probably wont' use anything in my current role
    • I feel MW is amazing software that has HUGE potential
    • I also feel there's impediments to broader use, including:
      • Difficulty in installing, maintaining, & deploying infrastructure
      • MW Out-Of-The-Box is a blank page problem
      • For some applications, there would be communities that would use it more if solutions existed (and it was known that it was available)
      • Data structures are really important (& PX or some other way to share them would be extremely helpful)
      • Infrastructure is a separate discussion
      • For infrastructure, who is the customer? SysAdmins or New Users?
  4. Lex The project should be focused on organization & pragmatism
      • Good software is voluntarily used
  5. Yaron My assumption is Docker is a sledgehammer
    • Lex My implementation of Docker (when compared to Meza) is a sledgehammer
    • Yaron It seems Docker is a better solution than Meza when considering how easy it works on different systems
    • Rich Where do the Docker images "live"?
      • Lex Could be anywhere, but typically on DockerHub (either public or private)
      • Rich We need assurance all code is coming from a "reputable source"
      • Cindy From Docker, images are described from YML files
        • These can be inspected
        • Some images are considered "official" by the maintainers
        • Meza & similar are defined by YML files as well, so trust is involved in both paths
        • There is an official MW image (from WMF)
      • Yaron There's no guarantee of security, there could be a major bug in SMW
  6. Yaron Now I'm thinking the best thing to do is create something from scratch
  7. Ad What will be inside the container?
  8. Lex Lots of decisions, MW volumed in? MySQL in it's own container?, etc.
    • Cindy I'm going to make another plug for orchestration, a level on top of the container
    • Ad Can you run Kubernetes from your local PC (or AWS/other)?
      • Cindy Yes
  9. Bryan Who is the customer? As an example, NASA started their wiki as a gorilla project under their desk. Could they use it? Would they continue to use it as they began to develop their own extensions?
    • Yaron It should support most/all use cases
    • Cindy There's a difference between development & production (and staging)
      • Bryan You can "spin up" a Docker image & use it for testing (development), but that shouldn't be used in production until the changes are incorporated back into the "official" Docker image. Is that right?
      • Yaron I think we should be able to "develop" & that part of the code would be outside of a Docker image
      • Lex Another option is environmental variables, you could volume in all of LocalSettings extensions

Chat transcript

Content pulled from the chat record of the meeting.

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