Remora Meeting Notepad Archive August-September 2006

This is an archive page for the Remora Meeting Notepad.

September 28 meeting

Present: sancus, cameron, schrep, morgamic, clouserw, wenzel, lars, shaver

Agenda

• Talk about search. (clouserw)
  • Some discussion here: Update:Remora_Idea_Dump#Search
    • shaver: I think we need order independence for launch (I've written a test), don't need boolean operations. Should have rating sort within each "group" of results (name, summary, description), not strictly a launch-stopper IMO.
• Talk about l10n (clouserw)
  • Specifically, I want to cover database interactions - how are users going to contribute? (shaver says .csvs - shall we plan something friendlier/more managable?)
    • shaver: don't need anything more for things like category-name translations for launch, let's defer that planning until at least after we have the CSV stuff in place
• Marketing/identity topics (cbeard):
  • Site presentation / layout
  • Additional graphics / design info
  • Developer relations
  • Top 50 vs. the rest of the universe -- how we will split the two, if at all
    • UI-driven separation between recommended items and the rest of the land?
    • Two sites?
      • shaver: Initially two sites, as per Update:Remora_Requirements
      • shaver: we need to figure out how to link from addons.mozilla.com to addons.mozilla.org and vice versa
• IT topics (schrep):
  • Staging server for v3
    • shaver: as per conversations with justin a while back, we're going to be getting "read-only" access to the staging servers for log viewing and profiling; not sure where that's at
• Layout elements, navigation helper
• Master/slave database configs, how to switch in controllers
• Routing standards, mapping to v2 URIs
  • do we need to support v2 URIs at launch? (shaver)
• Wiki updates needed
  • Installation instructions for IT
• Outstanding task list: User:Shaver/Remora_Task_Dump

• l10n
  • not using translation2 any more, just the Translation model
  • won't be able to use cake list-generation helpers as-is, can just write code by hand
  • gettext: waiting on views to generate po files
  • locale selected based on lang= parameter
    • rewrite-based
    • needs test for selection process
  • gettext: state
    • clouserw to work on one view (add-on display) as example and test today

• staging
  • morgamic to investigate

Roundtable

• Cameron: version spreadsheet sent to Lars, has a lot of drinking to do this weekend
• Lars: version rationalizations now in the migration script, and script updated to the current schema; available for SQL wizardry (search?!?)
• sancus: updated test dataset for more test data info, working on image retrieval
  • working on HTML for home and browse pages (might get help from silverorange)
  • HABTMWTFBBQ? gotta do it by hand because the model doesn't fit Cake's association model
• clouserw: pulled out T2, committed initial search
• shaver: wrote some search tests, working on results output based on RC mockup
  • first, doing schedule/plan work with morgamic so that I don't get kicked off the island
• morgamic: finished update tests, needs to add required dataset to remora-test.sql
  • need to figure out how to handle update-check for dual services
  • pfs and blocklisting straightforward
  • pfs should eventually be based on the db
  • acl: just for admin/users? fligtar has it working for developer
  • working on schedule/plan with shaver
• fligtar: working on getting better!
  • going to plan more tests for additem/edititem
• wenzel: welcome!
  • new web-apps intern from Germany and OSL, going to be working on Remora with us!

September 21 meeting

Present: Cameron, Clouserw, Lars, Morgamic, Sancus. Fligtar was sick :( Shaver notably absent for two weeks in a row... maybe he was actually doing his vacation thing!? Nahhh... couldn't be.

Binary data in database

Add-on xpi files are not in the database, so we're defining the path to them. It's in app/config/boostrap.php Should the screenshot data be in the database? Should it be in a a separate table, or just a column? Thinking column. Need binary info and mimetype. Going to test performance on this.

While we're at it, lets do the same and add columns for icons (logos) to the add-ons, applications and platforms tables.

No need to migrate the icon stuff, we'll create it.

Afterthought: Are we going to need multiple sizes for those icons? (specifically the application icons.) Don't think so, they only appear in the compatibility info.

Application versions

Not going to migrate public app version stuff, delete it from the sql. It's useless.

Had a bit of discussion about which application versions can't be used as maxversions and which can't be used as minversions (eg. 2.0.0.* is a stupid minversion. 2.0 is a silly maxversion (leads to bad user experience when people get 2.0.0.1 and the developer hasn't updated the add-on. That's the reason the * stuff was invented. It's in "their rules" somewhere that they're not supposed to release stuff with that format of version string if it breaks a current public api (extension, etc.))

appversion canbeusedasmin canbeusedasmax ?

Existing non-valid application versions

Update:TroublesInAddonMigration

What can we do about them? There was a lot of discussion in this, culminating with a decision that we're going to migrate them to what we guess is the correct version. We observed that it's different depending on if the version is being used as maxversion or as a minversion.

Action: Lars is going to compute a list of the versions which are currently being used for each application. Cameron will then go through and decide what it maps to if it's being used as a minversion, and what it maps to if it's being used as maxversion.

Navigation

Need to think about elements that can be called by the layout. Contents in elements folder, logic in a helper.

Sancus going to finish off the add-on listing page and then do homepage with links to other sections

Roundtable

Sancus: Check the dashboard for what's he's up to.

Cameron: licensing stuff done and checked in. When creating new pages or if you have queries, there's a wiki page. Still a small To-do list for that but it's no big deal. This week I'll be doing that appversion mapping and I might create some html for some minor interactions.

Clouserw: l10n stuff is on the standards page now. Talked with Mark Sullivan and dug around in Vanilla to see about localising that.

Morgamic: stubs for service tests, halfway through update.php, spent time reading through the cake manual to brush up. Going to work on tests/services.

Fligtar: Continued working on additem, hoping will be done soon, even though he's been saying that for a month. Lobbied against the "projects" directory in SVN. Plan on beginning a translation for the "l33t" locale, and should finish additem and the tests. Won't be at next week's meeting either because from Wednesday night - Friday he will be out of town. As a result that out-of-townage, his left elbow will be in a splint, but hopefully he'll still be able to type with both hands.

Lars: Going to get that table of versions to Cameron, then work on implementing it into the migration script when Cameron gets it back.

September 14 meeting

Present: Cameron, Clouserw, Lars, Morgamic, Sancus. Apologies: Shaver (sleeping), Fligtar (said he was going to be late, but never made it.)

Licensing

All the files we create need to be under the MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. How many files have we already created that aren't licensed? Guess about 50. clouserw going to talk to shaver about writing a script to do stuff. Read http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/ for info.

As you edit files and think of it, put in the tri-license HTML boilerplate, but don't worry about it and don't let licensing distract you from your righteous quests! "incorrect licensing on source files for server-side app" is one of those things that I would be gleeful to have on our "cut list" as we near the schedule singularity". (shaver)

Coding Guidelines

HTML 4.01 strict is the way to go. It's in the mozilla.org coding guidelines, transitional is sloppy and if we use xhtml we'll get into the content-type discussion.

Also, no javascript errors, (with javascript.options.strict set to true.)

Another "fix 'em if you notice 'em" thing, but please don't let the pursuit of strict distract or eat up time with discussions. We can fix that in post, if at all, and if having non-validating HTML is even in my top-ten list of problems at release, I will ascend to heaven on a chorus of angels, so strong will my joy be. (shaver)

SVN notificatons

• RSS, email.. whatever. Something would be good.
• Looking at http://cia.navi.cx/

Going to talk to shaver about getting something happening with IT...

Navigation

Going to have to look at page relationships and how to navigate the site. Radiant core mockups has some stuff, but what other ideas do we have on this? Need to think about it.

Roundtable

Sancus

• Done MDC stuff, working 100% on Remora now
• Working on major interactions
• Where's our mockups from radiant core?
  • Schedule is suffering
  • need mockups asap
    • everything we're getting from RC we've already got, in the zip from last week (shaver)
  • not much room for slipping, Firefox is going to be released October sometime, aiming for concurrent release.
    • Any slip we do have will probably result in less QA/testing and a lower-quality product
    • we should prefer to slip number of features rather than quality; it's easier to recover from the former than the latter; example: slip localization of dev tools rather than test coverage for dev tools. We need to discuss specific things here, though, to really be helpful. (shaver)

clouserw

• Simple search done
  • works, needs improvement
    • where is it? (shaver)
    • it's still a controller at this point, so /controllers/search_controller.php (clouserw)
  • currently title, then description
    • Should be title, summary, description as discussed previously
  • no tests yet.. need to figure out how to do that, going to wait for it to be further developed before writing more.
    • I wish I had my previous test stub :( happy to help sketch out tests, or write them if that's helpful and viable (shaver, shaking his fist at the MBP gods)
• working on l10n string stuff
  • have some demo code which was discussed in IRC.
    • ugly, but doesn't seem to be another way.
  • open to suggestions, but need to get them in quick otherwise this is going to become a coding standard.
    • this has been merged into the coding standards (clouserw)

lars

• got new database stuff yesterday,
  • haven't checked in changes to migration script yet

morgamic

• going to work on Remora more from thisarvo
• What's with the double slash?
  • Nobody knows, ask fligtar
  • shouldn't be a problem, likely an artifact of the test goop making sure that you don't blow up if you don't have a trailing/leading slash on one of the components (shaver)
• shoot css queries at morgamic or clouserw, they've done plenty before

Cameron

• Got SVN and CVS access - hoorah!
• Learning about command line interfaces.

September 7 Meeting

fligtar's questions

• additem related
  • localized addontypes?
    • same addontypes in all locales, human strings in translation table
  • summary maxlength? 200? 500? don't remember what shaver said
    • 250 chars for now
  • developer terms of use?
    • make them agree to terms of use and policies when signing up --- good idea!
  • are we localizing admin stuff?
    • later!
  • what HTML tags should be allowed and for what fields? suggested from bug 343573:

    <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <ul> <li> and <strong>

    • good set to start with; we'll have to add more later
• other
  • future of the approval queue
    • refactoring UI to have a page per add-on with more data
    • collision detection on submit
    • review comments and developer correspondence later
  • separating developer and public methods by more than just ACL? ie, another controller/model?
    • separate controllers would be good for developer and admin actions; fligtar to rename existing
  • at what point do we close bugs with "fixed in v3"
    • when fixed in remora with a test
• ID collisions
  • start at 10,000 for new add-ons, to reserve old AMO ids
• zip of assets from RC in ~mike on linux8
• need to document localization process for extension data (shaver)
• per-locale preview images?
  • no facility right now for different images per locale
  • can localize captions now, though
• search!
  • Zend search-lucene: doesn't support UTF-8
    • UTF-8 support coming, will require php5
  • first pass: LIKE %term% queries on name, summary, description?

roundtable status

• fligtar
  • fighting off v1 issues. additem is 80% done (at least its first revision). currently stuck on HABTM problem which sancus will help on.
  • working on test helper so that controller tests will work and then I can actually write the additem tests. going to make second pass through current bugs and make list better.
• morgamic
  • been doing some python test stuff for AUS; v1 stuff; working on tests for core services (version check, pfs, blocklist, etc.)
  • should be done tests by Monday, then working on auth and session stuff
• clouserw
  • working on search now
• sancus
  • MDC/nutch stuff turned into hell, done now!
  • working on HABTM issues and controller test fixups
• shaver
  • policy and Fx2 extension-prep stuff
  • getting infrastructure in place for staging/deployment, incl php5
  • started on localization document, need to finish up quickly and send to Pascal
  • working in background on search-engine view
  • anime extensions coming out of T-shirt asses, I think
• cameron
  • dashboard still exists!
  • 100% pooch-screwing this week
  • buying sunscreen
• lars
  • so many tests for migration now!

August 31 Meeting

• SVN is up, shaver importing today with morgamic's adult supervision
• get accounts! get accounts! get accounts!

• fligtar: almost done add-item, worked some v1 issues
• clouserw: did l10n tests for templates, ready to help out
• lars: database migration scripts still done! working on stats stuff as well, but has some bandwidth to help
• cameron: dashboard template done, ready to help with HTMLizifications
• shaver: working on infrastructure setup for staging/deploy, getting strings to localizers, wrapping up with RC
• sancus: mdc work wrapping up, will work on controller test framework and getting tests grouped
• mark: has been working on vanilla locally and pruning things we don't need; waiting for forum HTML
• morgamic: pfs/v1 work behind him, also AUS work for Fx2b2; migrating services into remora (SVN), some db/schema changes

August 24 Meeting

• Schema: applications_versions.public should maybe be appversions.public? Fligtar 07:57, 24 August 2006 (PDT)

August 17 Meeting

• what's in version control?
  • Cake?
    • Yes
  • translation2?
    • No, install through PEAR
  • vanilla?
    • Yes
  • what else?
    • need to be careful where SimpleTest ends up, vendor vs. system-PEAR
      • symlink from vendors/ to SimpleTest in PEAR install?

• l10n strategy
  • gettext for static content, explicit in templates
  • translation2 for database content selection
    • probably not for the flat strings
    • morgamic and wil to mail lorenzo with their questions
      • can we point to arbitrary foreign keys? addition of primary key column
      • performance differences between gettext-direct and gettext-via-translation2
      • a mystery third question!

• outstanding schema issues
  • just audit and locale-limited flags

• handling of dictionaries
  • add-ons type
  • will probably need specialized category-page for landing

• installation guide
  • dependencies
  • VCS information
  • mod_rewrite rules
  • locale packs

• list of IT requirements

• audit trail questions?
  • one table for users, one table for add-ons

• add-on flags per locale? (for profiling certain extensions in certain locales, f.e., or making sure that Japanese users don't see "Editor's Pick!" for things that are crappy with multi-byte input)
  • look at using hidden categories for this?

• search engines
  • add-on type
  • custom install operation
    • already have to solve that for themes
  • where to host? in database? probably don't need bouncer/releases

• version control
  • Need to rejig repository to import Cake cleanly
  • SVN should be up v. soon, may just move into there

• Vanilla discussion
  • already supports split read/write database connections
  • can write custom authenticators to get user information from other cookies, etc.
  • forums per extension
  • localization support

• Mockup status
  • browse mockup iterating, first versions on wiki
  • search results coming to HTML today

• Schedule check
  • controller/model scaffolding done
  • l10n on track

• Migration
  • scripts ready for test, waiting for Lars to get DB access

• PFS/VersionCheck
  • their own appdirs

• Agenda/status
  • morgamic: got AUS stuff done, migrating other apps to Cake stuff, then ACLs
  • fligtar: working on extension upload capabilities
  • sancus: working on MDC stuff for the rest of the week, then back to controllers and testing
  • clouserw: l10n work
  • shaver: working with Mark on the Vanilla stuff, worrying about infrastructure and localizers
  • osullivan: getting Vanilla rolling
  • lars: migration stuff, taking dumps of db

• Standards/conventions
  • naming/layout of files and dirs
  • test practices and architecture
  • coding styles
  • preferred beverages

Action items:

• db access for Lars
• server access for Lars and Mark
• questions to translation2