Minutes from 2015-04-30 Call

[jasnell]

Node.js Foundation Technical Governance Sync
April 30, 2015
1:00pm PDT
via GoToMeeting

TC Attendees: Mikeal Rogers, James Snell, Chris Dickinson, Steven Loomis, Bert Belder, Julien Gilli, Michael Dawson (MDa), Colin Ihrig, Wyatt Lyon Preul, Jeremiah Senkpiel (JSe)

Also Attending: Mike Dolan (LF), Todd Benzies (LF), Scott Nicholas (LF)

Agenda (sent by James Snell via email prior to the meeting):

The main item on the agenda is the Convergence Plan. The initial draft
can be found here: #66

Also on the agenda are the additional Working Group proposals from
Michael Dawson and James Snell: https://github.com/mhdawson/workgroup-proposals

Meeting Notes

UPDATE -- Most recent draft: https://github.com/jasnell/dev-policy/blob/6601ca1cd2886f336ac65ddb3f67d3e741a021c9/convergence.md

JS: Need to determine if everyone is in agreement on this plan or if any changes are needed. Also need to determine a timeline to set this place to. As it relates to Foundation announcement, we are looking at a June timeframe. James has asked the announcement plan be brought to the TC for review.

??: Is there a window of time between Foundation being setup and announcement going out?

MDo: Groups can start doing convergence work on code, nothing requiring a delay on this. The announcement is more just a public statement, should not hang up any of the convergence work. We are looking at late-May, early-June for an announcement.

JS: Largest concern on starting convergence plan is making sure the two projects are in agreement on the steps. Is there agreement between the two projects to merge?

BB: Haven’t voted on this yet. Most TC members are expecting this to happen. Need to put the convergence doc up for people to look at it.

JS: Need to make sure that actual work progress has broader collaboration between both projects. Need to get a regular joint TC call going to deal with the day-to-day progress.

CD: Need to demonstrate that is process will work without slowing progress down.

JS: One proposal is to have node foundation under github. The io.js would be moved to node foundation and renamed.

(Speaker Unknown): If io.js is to move to foundation, would need about 1 week to ask for comments and get to a vote.

JS: looking at 2-3 weeks for having it moved over to github.

CD: if someone wanted to fork io.js before it got moved over, we could show some code before getting things setup.

(Speaker Unknown): the clearer we make it that moving into foundation, there will still be io.js releases will help calm people’s concerns.

JS: needs to be stressed that convergence repo is for the NEXT major release. this will not slow down work at all. But, it needs to be recognized that there will be some parallel work happen, but not slow down what is in the existing release plans. The plan is to create a new repo, that is a fork of io.js currently and pull node.js commits on top. Whatever worked pre-merge, will continue to work post-merge.

(Speaker Unknown): Move over io.js org, create new repo. Everybody for both core projects gets added to new core team.

JS: for potential controversial topics like internationalization, we should proactively determine a solution before getting there.

SL: what are the other potentially controversial topics that could be identified?

JSe: node.js implemented support for flaky tests, io.js has removed it.

JS: In this case, it would need to be added after the merge.

MDa: Would something like this break the end user?

JSe: It’s not like an API change.

BB: added back SSLv2 support. Are there people from node.js that objects what io.js has done?

JS: For each TC, go through what the other project has done, and see if there are any major objections so that we can start the conversations early how we would resolve these conflicts. In the short term, we can land the areas that are non-controversial. Sounds like everyone is pretty well in agreement. Need to determine how to execute on next steps. In the interim, need to have a fork created of io.js how it currently stands (fork of 2.0, wherever the master is at). This will be used as the baseline. Use this fork as a place to start landing the merge commits.

BB: This convergence doc needs to be put up for review and voting within org.

JSe: Can we create a temporary node convergence org for this?

(Speaker Unknown): github/nodejs

CD: preference is to work off of a personal fork.

JS: James will make 1-2 more edits on convergence doc based on this conversation before landing that pull request. Get another convergence meeting set up in the next 2-3 weeks. Will create repo under his personal account. Need to discuss proposed WGs for the Foundation (not specific to either project).

MDa: 3 WGs: Benchmarking, Post-mortem debugging, way forward on internationalization. Start this work under the dev policy and guidelines for the foundation. https://github.com/mhdawson/workgroup-proposals

MDa: 3-4 people interested in each WG.

??: Create in io.js/evangelism to get the community involved in the WGs

JS: has created the node.js convergence on his personal account and has added the core team to it.

JSe: io.js core team isn’t up to date… need to look at TC

??: add other committers from io.js to it (which is the collaborators)

BB: Suggest doing this same time/day in 2 weeks.

Action: TB to send out meeting invite for 2 weeks from today.

Recording Link: Mikeal will post to youtube channel.