Another proposal for modernization of our infrastructure

[Inge Wallin]

On Saturday, January 31, 2015 10:37:26 Jan Kundrát wrote:
> On Thursday, 29 January 2015 21:03:32 CEST, Eike Hein wrote:
> > I think it's a real concern, and I'm wary of "we can patch
> > it away" because carrying a huge custom patch delta for UI
> > mods is what kept us from upgrading Bugzilla for multiple
> > years. I think "is it realistic that we can maintain this
> > and keep up with upstream even if Ben or Jan get hit by a
> > bus" is an important question with regard to both proposals.
> 
> That's a very good question, and a reason for why I am not patching Gerrit
> with stuff not accepted upstream. I agree that carrying big custom patches
> won't scale.
> 
> So far, we don't have any patches at all. I'll be backporting stuff such as
> the show-headers-prior-to-cpp from 2.11 because it is super-easy to do so,
> and because 2.11 isn't released yet.
> 
> We also have some JavaScript proof-of-concept for Bugzilla integration. You
> can check its complexity at [1]. I managed to write that over a Sunday, and
> I am definitely not a web guy. I had zero jQuery experience prior to this.
> 
> > I have similar concerns with some of the promised benefits
> > in the proposal because they strike me more of "we could",
> > which is cool, but it's not "we will". E.g. if test build-
> > ing precombined patches takes an OpenStack cluster - do we
> > have one? Where are we going to get that horsepower? Can
> > we keep it?
> 
> Designing contingency plans is indeed important (see section 5 of that
> proposal; it talks about managing infrastructure-as-code). You are also
> right that the current infrastructure is best-effort and that KDE won't get
> an SLA without paying for one. If we (KDE) need an SLA, we (the company the
> cluster is hosted at) will be happy to be asked for a quote :). Or we (KDE)
> can just host this stuff anywhere else and pay someone else.
> 
> But it seems to me that we already have pretty clear consensus that we
> absolutely do want a pre-approval CI coverage, and that the costs in HW are
> worth it.

The rest of the discussion aside, this is something I want to strongly object 
to.

Given how few of our community who have participated so far, I think it 
borders on pure falsehood to claim "clear consensus" on *anything*. I would 
put more like "some people want it", and I can certainly see the appeal. But 
from that to simply state "the costs in HW are worth it" (and conveniently 
forgetting cost in maintenance) is a very long step.

> Does someone from KDE e.V. know whether we could get some free HW
> resources from a commercial partner (hi RedHat/SuSE/Digia)? Do we have some
> backup cash to e.g. rent VM time from Amazon/Rackspace/whatever in an
> unlikely event that the current hosting platform is withdrawn with no prior
> notice?
> 
> About the "we could" vs. "we will" in general, I have to admit I'm slightly
> confused by that. The proposal is careful to describe what is available
> today, and to make a clear difference in saying what needs to be done in
> future. Maybe some part needs clarification -- what parts do you think are
> more of the yes-this-would-be-nice-but-I'm-worried nature?
> 
> With kind regards,
> Jan
> 
> [1] https://gerrit.vesnicky.cesnet.cz/r/static/bugzilla.js