Jenkins Google Summer of Code Office Hours, 10 Feb 2021

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From YouTube: February 10, 2021 - Jenkins GSoC Office Hours

Description

Kristin Whetstone presented on Jenkins Pipeline Steps Docs Generator (https://github.com/jenkins-infra/pipeline-steps-doc-generator).

Could be a framework to use to do REST API Spec Generator (proposed GSoC project idea - https://www.jenkins.io/projects/gsoc/2021/project-ideas/automatic-spec-generator-for-jenkins-rest-api/)

A

Great welcome you all to jenkins do sock meeting today we have kristen wetson with us today, which is great because she's going to do um a walkthrough of the jenkins step, doc's generator. I hope I've said that correctly, but I'll, let I'll let mark say a bit more than kristin present as well.

B

Yeah, so so there is a there is a tool called the pipeline step stock generator that kristen, I believe, was actually the original author of and what this tool does. Is it extract? It is the generator that presents uh pages to www.jenkins.io that describe all the pipeline steps from right now, hundreds of jenkins plugins.

B

So so it somehow does work some very cool magic and reads source code from all sorts of different plugins and presents them as web pages now. Kristin you'll give a much better description than I do of that. But but for me it's just an impressive piece of work. Tell us more about it!.

C

Well, thanks mark um yes, so basically, if it does exactly what you were saying um and I like to think of this generator in two distinct parts, um the first part is kind of this. Entire local pipeline called the hyperlocal plug-in manager, which basically acts as a plug-in manager that exists outside of jenkins.

C

That allows you to be able to do like it loads plug-ins, just as inside of jenkins, but it doesn't require jenkins to run and the second half of this is the actual part that goes through and like generates the ascii dock, that's required by the website to um actually be displayed, so you can see it beautifully and like with many different layers and stuff and drill down and the links inside of um the documentation.

C

So I guess I will kind of I can kind of go over it in two in those two parts. um Would it be helpful if I shared my screen.

B

I I assume so I think it will help people a bunch, so so you use the term hyper local plug-in manager. There are a lot of words hiding in there, so I'm looking forward to more description of what what what that means compared to how jenkins plug-ins normally operate, sure.

C

All right, so I I'll cut there's this is kind of the entire um project here and it's only a few classes to make this entire thing go um so I'll close this folder here, so the entrance into the pipeline steps extractor or the into like this entire thing here is this class called pipeline steps extractor and it reports a lot and it looks scary, but it's because it has to be able to pretty we're pretty much like faking out a lot of what jenkins does when it does all of the plug-in loading when it starts up.

C

So let's get down here, um there's a bunch of parameters, so you can say basically um what so part of this is because we're you're, basically picking out the beginning, we're speaking out the beginning part of jenkins. We have to tell it to point to a plugins directory um so and the plugins directory should be pre-populated with all the plugins that you would like to import.

C

So as part of the build step for this job, we actually go and we go to like the jenkins plugin site and we download all of the plugins ever into a folder. And what and these are the hpi or the jpi files pretty much exactly like. If you took up gen, you took your jenkins instance and wanted to install every single plugin that we make and the reason we do. This is because in this generator we have no idea what the pipeline steps are, and every day since new plugins are added or plugins are enhanced.

C

They might now have a pipeline step and we want to make sure that we capture that in the documentation, so it's safer for us to be able to just go straight out to jenkins, to plug in site and just copy down everything, and this can be a lot.

C

This is a lot of things. We're trying to load into our basically are like our plug-in manager. um So there are a few things that we do to kind of like prevent too many open file handlers, um because that's you two things loaded at once, but generally at this point um it works. So I haven't seen any issues with it, dealing with the massive hundreds of plug-ins that we have inside of jet kids. So far,.

B

um So so are, do you want questions during or do you want questions to be a little later? What's your preference.

C

um You can do it during.

B

Okay, so so, okay, so so the the early step is download all the plug-in binary files, all the plug-in binaries to the local file system, so that you can then process them. So you download or the tool downloads, a thousand five hundred or a thousand seven hundred plugins from the jenkins update site and now has them.

C

Locally you'll have to download or point it to whatever plug-ins you want the tool. Doesn't, I think, the jenkins, the jenkins job for the tool? Does the tool just will use whatever directory it's pointing at think of it like jenkins right, you want to be able to have your plug-in prop plug-ins directory pre-populated same thing, with the tool.

B

So, okay, so it it takes whatever is there? So I can define a subset for testing purposes, exactly I'm not always processing all the plug-ins exactly right, because.

C

That takes forever and then sometimes it's actually yeah. So if you have a fewer subset that you know that exactly what it should be, it's good to be able to visually test what you want, so you can make when it produces the documentation. You can see like okay, yes, this is correct also so it's it just runs a lot faster when it's not working on every single plugin.

B

That explains the the comment in the readme that there's in the readme instructions which guide us use this workflow command there. This build command to bring in the plug-ins that our workflow plug-ins.

C

Thank you, so I started actually updating the readme because after I saw that comment in the channel that it was outdated, I was like, oh okay, so I started trying to go through this and I was hoping to do a full request at some point kind of explaining a lot of this in, like the architecture section and then um maybe helping with a little bit more of a readme, so I'll make a pull request with this updated information. But it's still good that we're doing this today.

C

Thank you, yeah, yes, so that's where that part comes in, and so now we go into this method. We have a bunch of different um like a place where you want to print the ascii dock and that there's like declarative pipeline syntax, that's just generated by this too, and right like this- is just kind of like where the file at the end of all this gets written and then, if you're missing, that it will fill in spawn about except all right.

C

So the next piece we want to do is it comes to your hand, says, find steps, and this is the part where we we start by basically creating what we call what I've referred to here as the hyper plugin manager, and this here is the plugin manager without jenkins, so we'll go into that class. Now all right. So um during jenkins startup, um it does a lot of things, and one of them is it starts.

C

Its plug-in manager defines what's called a plug-in strategy and then points it to the plug-ins folder and then loads it and then, in the middle of all that loading jenkins is doing other things at the same time, and it comes back basically to the plugin manager.

C

The plugin manager reports like I'm done, um you can actually have access to all of these classes, like the plugin manager, will load all the classes into um an extension list and like into itself into a class loader and then be able to have that available to jenkins outside everything else. So if you ever look inside jenkins and like how it uses plugins, it basically can go to this class loader and pull information about um what is installed and like what it can do. So what we're trying to do here is like all right.

C

We don't have, and the plugin manager like requires of running jenkins, because it's very hard at this point to have things that are separated. So what we're doing here is to say all right. I just want to mock jenkins and basically use say like yes, it's running, but I just want the plugin manager instance. So there's a lot in here. That is like very, very complicated, because it's how jenkins itself runs and a lot of times like we don't necessarily care about what jenkins is doing.

C

We just want basically to fill up this class loader, so we can get access to it and then, with the class loader, we can now access the annotations and we know from how to write pipeline steps that pretty much annotations are the way that you say that this is a pipeline step.

C

So after we have this class loader filled out, we could go and basically query it for the in, like the pipeline step annotations and then pull out everything that we know as a pipeline step.

C

So that's maybe a little complicated. But what this will this method here called diagram. Plugins is the one that actually goes into the plugins folder and imports everything into the plugin manager.

C

So a lot of this is lifted directly from the plugin manager class um inside of jenkins itself. So the details of this is not too important, but the important thing is that it matches exactly how the plugin manager is doing it.

C

The way that we can get away with having a jenkins, basically not having jenkins, is we're using maquito to basically fake out jenkins, just like, if you're writing a unit text, but we're using it here inside of the code so there's base whenever there are certain methods that it calls to say like is jenkins there. We pretty much return and answer. That's like yes, jenkins is here or um like the init level, is something that it will um check as well.

C

So the jenkins init level will tell you where it is in the startup process and is required to be completed before the plugin manager complete. So we just say yeah yeah. It was complete same thing here, like um this install state is another piece that's needed by jenkins, so we just returned that it's in test.

C

um This is oh, yes, and if you're ever trying to get the plug-in manager.

C

So whenever we instantiate that, when you say git mock jenkins, I think this is used in a couple different places. We basically pass in like our plugin manager, and then we tell it to return our plugin manager rather than um yeah. We want to return our instances of plugin manager, not like anything else and then there's a couple other pieces here that- and these are just kind of filled in like as I was building the plugin manager. I just like it as soon as I tried to query jenkins.

C

I would just basically return a box for different different pieces. Like get computers, I think returns the plugins directory, and this is based on like what system that you're in diffusing uh yeah. So so a lot of these are just explicit methods are used, while the plugin manager is loading itself up. The other class that is mocked out here is this mock extensions list, and this is it's a fuller explanation of what's going on, but this is another thing: that's internal, the jenkins that is um used to figure out the types of pieces inside of.

C

How best to describe this? It's like it's a it's! um This is helping you get the annotations and different parts of the extensions from jenkins, so we wanted a reference. Oh sorry, before.

B

So so we, the I think of extensions as things that I add on to the settings for get, for instance, to tell it to do something different, or do this other thing or do that thing is this? One of those kind of extensions is that the concept here is anything I add into jenkins, I'm commonly using a thing, I think, of as an extension.

C

So this will help you get what you get. The extensions got it great, so you can see here that- and this is again like very internal to this- is another jenkins internal piece. So the stuff that you're talking about mark where you like, annotate with the extension and then you list it out like what inside is you do like extension and then it's the quotes and then what the extension is inside right. So now you can use this.

C

Basically, when you query the plugin manager, it will go down a couple lists into this extension list and you can see here.

C

This load, we want to be able to tell it to use the hyper local plug-in, manager's, plug-in strategy, and the plug-in strategy is used on. It's basically used by the by a plug-in manager to say how you want to be able to load plug-ins, and we actually have a copy of that defined here inside of our plugin manager.

C

Again, it's all so we can be able to access the plugins locally and some of the things inside of jenkins too, like the plug-in strategies, um it's only defined at the jenkins level as an abstract class and like the actual jenkins, plugin manager. This, like local plugin manager, which again, I think, is also an abstract class, like the one that's actually used by jenkins, defines the plugin strategy like as a private class inside of itself.

C

So I couldn't just copy like I couldn't just get to that plugin manager that was provided by jenkins because it was private. So I had to define a plug-in manager in here or plug-in strategy in here part of the plugin manager. You can also see there's this um class loader, and this is the actual instance itself that they're the actual object that has the references to all the different classes inside of jenkins.

C

So all those different things that, after it's been imported, will go into here and then you can query this to be able to get instances of different classes.

C

If this is getting too into too deep into other pieces, you can. Let me know, I don't know how much how helpful some of this is to actually um being able to see like extract the steps, because, after like all, this is done. The basis of the really important thing that we want to do here is we can use after we have a references, plugin manager, that's been loaded up. We can um tell it to say.

C

We can basically say get stuff descriptive, this stuff descriptors and we can use it to be like call run tasks and it will be able to and it's this is. This is another way to be able to actually like use the task manager is this kind of sorry it's getting a little complicated, but.

C

Yeah, like I can understand how this is kind of going in there, but basically we can end up using like the stuff, descriptors and the extent like the extensions and query the hyper local plugin manager to be able to get that those pieces of information.

C

B

So are you? Okay, if I ask a sort of a directing question towards sagar, has, is the one who had originally started this on this on this line of questioning sure that he's looking at? How could he apply this to the rest api and I'm assuming what we were?

B

What what the technique then would be is, whereas the pipeline steps, doc generator looks for pipeline steps, the thing that the rest api would be looking for is it would be looking for things that are providing rest api, endpoints and so, instead of a step descriptor class, he might be using something different.

C

Yes, so yeah so like this is kind of the important line here.

C

Because this this is kind of like this here is this in it strategy and this diagram plug-ins, because, as we saw before, like this plugin diagram, plugins method here um ignore the jenkins internal stuff. This this is the. This is the important method so yeah this this right. So this these three lines pretty much tell it to get started the image strategy.

C

I think it's defined it's something that you can import from jenkins. We basically pass it in and say diagram. The plugins is basically tell it to go and because it's execute reactor comes again from like how jenkins tells the plugin manager run, I'm not 100 sure right now like why it does it this way, but this is. I just know that this is how it has like a reactor is how jenkins interacts with the plugin manager. So basically, I just copied the execute reactor method and told it to basic, basically told it to run.

C

um I think there might be some reason. That's why it's like has some mock jenkins stuff, but you have to tell it to execute as a reactor and then um yes and then here instead of looking for the rest api annotations, I don't know what they are, but I just know that stuff descriptor one works for the plug-in steps. So then, after that you have um a lit, it will return, and this find components um you can search for anything based on class and it will return a list of that class and then from there.

C

Everything below that like this is the part that I think you're going to care about, and then everything below this is basically getting it to the point. Where um excuse me like, basically getting it to the point where it can uh generate the ascii dock, which was its own fun because there was no java at the time. When I was writing this. There was like no good java library to be able to generate aspidoc.

C

So that's why, like this document exists or this class exists, it goes and actually takes a whole bunch of pieces that are very specific to like what a step is and then appends a whole. It's it's a little painful. It takes string of pending and just builds this dot. Like builds this massive string of layers for that is ascii doc. um I kind of wish there was like a better way other than string string offending.

C

I think, if you're doing breast documentation, it's a lot easier to be able to, um I think, there's libraries out there that would help you with this, but for ascii doc. There wasn't so it looks this. That's why this class and this quasi descriptor are a little messy. I hope there would be a better way than being able to build it like that.

C

B

Right so sagar are you, okay, with what you've heard so far any questions that you have, I'm I'm fascinated kristen. Thank you very much. I will. I will keep asking you questions for another hour. If we're not careful. Okay,.

D

B

Have specific questions.

D

Yeah, thank you christian for this um beautiful presentation, and uh so currently I don't have a question to be honest, um but so far what I understand what she said is um um cloning, all the plugins and then um you said there are three lines which is um quite important.

D

What they are doing is actually extracting the classes that we um cares about and then from that actually from that classes, which you named, I believe, step descriptor. You are just extracting your.

B

D

Yeah yeah, I guess right.

B

Okay, continue kristen.

C

Sure I I don't know what else you really want to uh go into here. There's a couple. Let's say some of these are kind of maybe a little bit.

C

Some of these are going to go a little bit more into pulling out information about the steps like this process. Steps piece this is going to be very.

C

This is actually your when the stuff for the rest, api generator, you'll, probably write something similar, but very focused on how the rest calls look inside it like how the rest pieces look. I don't know really. I don't know like when I looked at this. It was very much of like okay. What this is the stuff descriptor class like what are the different pieces? You'd have to look at the rest api once it's like kind of maybe build something similar excuse me and then um I yeah like this is just kind of figuring out.

C

What's the plugin name, um this might be helpful for figuring out that piece, because you can get a descriptor and then there's a method inside of plug-in manager where it like acts like the plug-in manager, can actually tell you this stuff and that those pieces are found inside of here as well.

C

It's just kind of like a this is kind of like the benefit of having a whole plug-in manager, rather than trying to figure out how to parse these files yourself, because it has the plugin manager itself, has a whole bunch of methods that are just useful for being able to parse the information that it holds inside of itself, especially like this get plug-in name for descriptor like these are things that the plug-in manager can do, and since we created our own local version, we can take advantage of it, which is awesome versus trying to have to parse everything ourselves.

C

So that's kind of the whole reason again like we use the plugin manager. It's there's it's powerful. It can do things for us and it means that we don't have to go through and try to like search on. I mean there's hundreds and hundreds of plugins and all of them could have pieces. This allows the plugin manager to just do it for us, so that's kind of why we. I went down this path um with the generator like.

C

I wanted to be able to take advantage of the plug-in manager's abilities to have these things built in.

B

Thank you very much, kristen excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Sagar. It sounds like you've got what you need. Do you have any other questions before we go on to other topics.

D

uh uh No um yeah, no, I'm just going to now break down this video into what she said and taking uh what actually that cloak, like code block, is doing and trying to relate it with our rest, api well, yeah.

C

So I what would be really helpful here- and I think at one point um actually now, I'm thinking about this- I think andrew bear tried at one point to take out the hyper local plugin manager and all the locking pieces into another repository. So maybe that was part of the project. That would be useful because we don't really want to repeat code right so like if it's possible to like take those pieces out, so they can be used by more than one thing.

C

I don't know what other documentation would need to be generated, um but it could be helpful in the future, basically like these, like basically being able to take out the plugin manager these jenkins. It has another thing I should point out um because of the way maquito works. It has to be in main java, hudson folder, because that's how it's stored, like thankfully not too many levels deep but like the java hudson, is where the package is located inside jenkins. So it just has to follow that same folder structure.

C

If you take those pieces out, it can be used by anyone anywhere um but yeah like basically again like in two halves. I always take like this mocking half and then as soon as you get to this part, where, after you execute the reactor and basically load up, all the plugins feel free go go for it. You can figure out. You can do anything that the plugin manager allows you to do because now you have a reference to it and you don't have to worry about spinning up jenkins.

E

I have a question here.

C

E

Yeah uh the class the plugin manager that you're using is this the same as plugin installation manager from jenkins. No.

C

So the plugin installation manager is another really cool thing, but the plug-in installation manager it helps. You basically get to the point before you want to start your jenkins, so that will go and um it plug installation manager will take a list or you can go, take like a string, separate, comma stuff or a value list, or I think you can use a yaml file mark. You can back me up on this that one okay, good gamble file and you can actually and use that to go and download the plugins in the first half.

C

So almost you could use these projects together. Right, you can go and say: hey here are the list of plugins that I want to install or I I would like to basically run with my to get the plug-in steps or pipeline steps for download them to a folder, and then, when you run the docs generator, you point it at that folder and then it will just look at that subsection of plugins the. um I really, I think, the project that that was a google summer code project like two years ago. It was, it was really.

C

It's really cool.

E

Yeah, like yeah, it was uh two years ago also- and this year uh oleg has like mentioned this project like some improvements for the tool. So I think this year also, this is in the ideas list, project.

C

I actually helped with that project two years ago too. So if you have any questions about it, I can answer those as well. So maybe it's a good thing I joined today, but um do you have any specific questions about that project?.

E

Yeah, actually I have I have been like thinking. uh I read the details about the project idea and there was like improvements uh which were based on the tickets, uh which are posted on jira or the issues that were posted in github so uh like there was one feature like requested by some user uh regarding the locking of the like locking the dependencies uh for the instance.

E

So I was like thinking. uh I didn't do much of a research, but I thought maybe, while like, if you're, given a file to print out the like, if you're given the file to download the plugins like, will it be feasible to just copy those things?

E

I mean I'm sounding too simple in saying this but like if we want to keep if we want to lock the like dependencies, if a user is providing us a file and we are already like spawning or we are already finding the dependencies which, like sub dependencies of the of that plugin so like, is this way like the way of printing all those dependencies in a file be a better like an idea or a solution to the locking mechanics blocking request?

E

Did you get my point.

C

So what you you're proposing, I think, is that you would like to. If you have a version, if you're providing a version of a plug-in, you would say.

B

C

All of this dependencies and put them to a kind of like a pre, because there is a preview function inside of this to be able to tell you what would be downloaded installed. So as part of that, you would like to say all right.

C

Here's what I want to install and then here's kind of what you need to what what it requires is that kind of what you're, the the reason that this is a little bit harder than it originally thought is that um when you have a whole bunch of different plugins inside of like basically defined each of them could require, and sometimes they do require different base versions of the plugin and one of the other plugins that you might have tried to install but will require a higher version than the locked or like a yeah, a different version, the one that's locked, so um you can end up with down the line.

C

Dependency conflicts. So you know you have like your locked version might be able like it. It requires certain versions of the plugins to be installed and, like you, if you want it truly at that version, you can't really have features that are being issued by plug-in or by uh plug-ins that are at a higher version level. So I think that's kind of like where the problem comes in, but doing a preview step, or you can say these are exactly the versions of these plug-ins required by the one that you have blocked.

C

It's helpful, so I think the big yeah, the big problem with that is it's just like so hard to be able to do the dependency map um calculations.

C

I think like halfway through that project there we ended up finding some other class like other projects that would have made it easier to do version dependency calculations, and I think that might be useful to look into for this, for the download project is to see like what else. There's some code out there to like how to write a package manager and like that might be able to be helpful for doing these calculation steps. So if you can look to significant.

E

C

Oh sorry, yeah.

E

No, no, it is peaceful like I was the same yeah. Can you if we can mention the names of some sort of thing.

C

Sure, yeah I'll I'll, find them and put them in the channel, but like those might be something good to look at as kind of like a an overview of how to do the dependency calculation stuff because yeah it it got really hard. At a certain point, I mean it's really fun. It's a really fun problem right like and it's something that you'd love to.

C

Do you have these huge maps and you have to figure out, what's the most optimal thing to download you can't have duplicates, you only have one, because jenkins will not be happy if you try to install multiple the same plugin so like which one do we end up installing and so I'll see. If I can find those again and post them in the but like that or sorry in the getter channel, um but that would help with how to help do the dependency calculations.

A

I have a contextual question. This discussion has has turned to being um about the proposal for the plug-in installation, yeah, okay,.

E

Which is to update.

A

Yes update the plug-in as well.

E

Sorry for that, no.

A

No, no, no please! This should be a free-ranging discussion. I love it when people just take ideas and run with them and connect them to new things. That's perfect! It was really for me um and then that question of dependency management and managing different versions of dependencies that may be needed um doesn't.

A

Are we so the idea is that we would essentially roll our own, for that.

A

Does it not seem that there should be some some open source tool that should be able to help us with dependency like it does seem like a very package manager, type problem, which seems like there's been so much work done in that space already. I just don't know what tools could be used with jenkins, but.

C

That's what was hard like right, because we were just basically like all- we want from the package management tool- is just that calculation step, because we've already got all the files. I think we already do our management, but um inside of jenkins, is just kind of like take the latest, and so um it was just like okay. How could we basically get that, like the calculation and it's like if we can just take the calculation?

C

That's what we would want to take from the tool, because right, you're, right cara, like there's a ton of tools out there to be able to do this already for almost every flavor? But it's like we just. I think that that installation manager tool just is supposed to act like our dependency manager, or it's just supposed to be like our package management tool, yeah.

E

C

Need a better, I, we just wanted to kind of look at um how best to calculate the version required. So.

A

Yeah, that's a really interesting problem.

C

Yeah, actually, it's really cool. I I love kind of it's very.

E

C

Also yeah, this is like that's what like. Both of these projects are really interesting, but yeah. It's like the the kind of how to come up with the data structure, to be able to store everything and the sorting was really fascinating. So.

B

I am surrounded by graph theory near nerds.

B

I am not a big I'm, not a big lover of graph theory, so I'm glad to have other people who love craft beer. That's really great.

C

Great, I think that's everything for me. Does anyone else have anything about this they'd like to have questions or.

A

Just just to um uh ask more from you, kristen actually sure.

B

A

You are more than welcome you. We would be very grateful and excited for you if you had any time to um volunteer to mentor for gsoc and if, if you had that space in your schedule, if you wanted to put yourself down as a mentor for either of those projects, that would be great.

A

I I should just say- and I don't know if this is being- if we're messaging this clearly enough, but um and I I should be working harder on this- the g-suck projects this year are half the size essentially in terms of hours being demanded of the students. Okay, so the overall projects will themselves be smaller as well. They'll have a smaller scope, um and this also means.

A

Obviously it's not going to be half the work for mentors, but it is a little bit of a reduction in what's going to be demanded of mentors, because the projects will be smaller but uh the more mentors the better. Then we we all share the load too. So it's good.

C

Sure, actually I got a question about that. So when does it start this year.

A

You know it's like this multi-phase um process, the coding.

B

A

Is not until the summer, it's basically the same ten weeks, um and actually I can oh okay. So precisely so, this.

C

Will be period? Seven? Yes, it's still over the same number of weeks, it's just reduced hours within the weeks right, yeah.

A

Okay, okay june 7th august 16th and then the reduced hours are really just taking into account the fact that this is this is quite a year and I think they're trying to have something new with g-stock, so basically, students and mentors can work out how they want to arrange their hours of work depending like if students have exams or they have something going on in their personal lives and that's fine.

A

We should be flexible with them and similarly for mentors as well, which is why it's nice to have multiple, multiple mentors, but yes for um submitting our application as a gsoc project. That application is due very soon that's due on february 19th, so it's nice to have additional mentor names down, as we you know, have that as part of our application and then uh in march the organizations that are chosen are announced and then there's the student application period and then the student bonding period, but coding proper, doesn't start until june.

A

All right awesome, cool thanks thanks for thanks for that kara yeah. Thank you for being here today. Yeah glad to have you talking with us awesome.

C

All right, I will stop sharing there we go and again, if there's any other questions, just let me know I'll try to I'll be better about being in the.

B

Channel, okay, deeply appreciated kristen. Thank you. Thank you. So vibe is also with us. um Himanshu or sagar did either of you have questions relative to any of the cloud native topics. The cloud events plug-in or anything like that, if not that's, okay but vibe, is with us and is probably willing to answer questions if you have them on those project ideas, if you don't no problem, no, no guilt there. It's just we've got one more potential mentor here as well.

B

If, if you have questions on cloud events or on oh dear, it was the kubern, the other kubernetes project help me out uh cara. What was the other one.

A

uh The techdon client plugin and actually I have questions I have questions for bob as as well um but I'll let the prospective students go first.

A

Or or I will um I had a question on your design doc for gsoc cloud events, plugin proposal, um I gave a little bit of feedback, but in general I think I think it looks great um have have you been able to connect that design doc to the the proposal? That's on um on the jenkins gsoc page.

F

um I I haven't updated it there, but uh let me pull request, which does that then.

A

Yeah, that would be awesome because I think it's helpful for um students considering the project and then I wanted to ask I didn't see, but you know it might be me. I didn't see the um techton client plugin. Are you still happy to propose that as a gsoc project idea.

F

Yes, uh so for the tech online plugin I, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a design dock which, which kind of uh explains what the client plugin does. So anyone who wants to get started can easily get started for what already exists, and then uh I uh create the proposal and create a pr for the proposal within tomorrow. Probably I'll.

A

A

Did you have any um questions for us as organizers, any anything that would be helpful on our end just so. I know that I'm not.

A

I just want to make sure you feel supported as someone who's proposing ideas.

F

Okay, I I I need to gather questions uh I so this is the first meeting I'm attending and I was actually in a sprint review just some five minutes ago, so I need to so. I will I'll ask questions. Maybe in the next meeting I might ask some questions, but for now I'm I'm here just to attend.

A

Okay, great and do we have any student questions for above.

D

uh I'm not from my side, yeah, okay,.

E

I'm also good for the moment, maybe next week.

A

Okay sounds good, and then I have questions um essentially for mark.

A

As as uh my mentor in this process, um we have had potential gsoc uh proposal, ideas that have been submitted on the jing nci dev channel uh mailing list, so they are public and you know it's it's hard for me to understand how how where to go with them, so they they've been proposed as as rough sketches, they have some merit as projects there's been a little bit of feedback, but it hasn't really gone beyond that stage. So what do you suggest?

A

I do mark, and specifically I'm I'm talking about if you've seen the jenkins operator and virtuous labs may be able to commit some mentors as well. So that's kind of cool and it's a fun project and the other one is the maintainer's heartbeat.

A

Like evan's proposal, um I don't know I mean I can share my screen. We can look at the email, but that's maybe a bit excessive, um so I'll, let you decide mark. What do you think? Should I follow up with you later? Do you want to discuss it now.

B

I think I think, a good, a good cat, one of the one of the common patterns I've seen anyway is people submit a proposal and receive no feedback, and one way to bring it to life then, is to ask a question relative to it or two of us ask questions. So we get some clarification that helps the the person making the proposal relays.

B

Oh there is interest and it helps them also get their ideas more precisely formed so that they could take the form of a project idea submission to the to the jenkins dot io website.

B

So because I I think, ultimately, when you submit the or when cdf submits the package to google summer of code on what, before the 19th, we submit that has to include a list of project ideas that are are in fact, project ideas with mentors behind them, and and so so we need, we need more detail from them and we need them eventually on the website.

B

So they've only got right now, eight days basically to to get from google doc to pull requests to the jenkins at io site merged ready to go into the into the submission to google.

A

B

So I think just ask them a question. I can certainly act as voice to ask questions as well. If that'll help.

A

Yes, yes, um yeah I'll, follow up I'll, follow up on both those, especially the virtus lab ones. They they were at the cloud native sig last week and I'm discussing the jenkins operator and and and then followed up saying they could make it into a gsoc.

B

You've got cloud native sig meets again tomorrow. If I recall correctly, doesn't it or is it.

G

A week from tomorrow.

B

Friday, so all right, it means friday. So if that's another good place to have discussions and help them get closer and closer to an actual project idea, that is, that meets all the criteria we have for a project idea that has a quick start, that it has mentors that it has enough skeleton on the you know enough enough general outline that a student could actually take it and and have have it as a good idea for their beginning.

B

A

Yeah, okay, good good, good, good, hopefully yeah, we'll move that forward rapidly in the next couple days, great um and then to circle back um to the hyper local plugin manager. That kristen discussed.

A

Is it worth me contacting andrew, bear and asking him if he did it sort of factor that out into its own little project, to be used so.

C

So I think it got factored out and it's like not updated that might have been this has been. This has existed for like this project has been around for like four or five years, and I think he did it like, maybe like four years ago, so I think it might be worth um making sure that they're big- and I know that updates- have been made to this class, especially I think mark.

C

You were even involved with updating the jenkins version that this depended on so like making sure that those changes are into that particular class or into that project would be helpful. It.

G

C

Of went off on a, I think he realized he wanted to use it for something, and then just kind of you know it's one of those things where you start it and then you just kind of it kind of withered or it didn't didn't it's not like kept up with maintenance.

C

So it's just hard to make sure that it also is being at the most recent, like the most recent version of jenkins um and there's a couple other pieces that I think zeb nick who's been really awesome, has also been looking, especially with making sure the display looks really good, because there were some display issues I think, early on with generating that big string.

C

I think he might have made some improvements too. So in certain on certain lines, especially with the upgrade. So it's that project, I think, is kind of just sitting. I don't think it's been updated at all, but I think for this particular project. It might be useful to maybe revive that and then update that piece just because it's something that could also be used for um the rest. Api basically update that and then uh maybe be able to use it in both projects.

C

I don't know if that now makes this way too long for for a google summer code project proposal, but I would think that that to be like that would be really beneficial for being able to get both of those pieces using the same underlying plugin manager code and also to make sure that it or just anyone else can use it if they find it find it useful for them, sorry go for it work.

B

So kristin is, is such a software engineer. I love software engineers when they tell us about avoiding duplication, etc. I'm much more lazy. I'd have just copied the code sagar, so I don't feel the least bit shame and costly code.

B

So so kristen is being very software engineer and that's really great that is so impressive. I'm I'm much more. I've got a problem I need to solve. I want to I'll just dirty copy the code and, if someday in the future, I want to refactor it to read to be dry. You know to not repeat myself: oh, that would be great, but so good good.

C

She's teaching.

B

You good principles and I'm expressing my.

C

C

Behavior yeah definitely get started just copy it all. Okay, sorry.

F

um By the way mark, I had a question for you if uh this is not going another direction, uh so I want to ask how are the? How would the goal setting be done for this year's uh g-shock, exactly like, haven't been in a g-stock or been a mentor before?

F

So uh I remember you saying on uh on the getter that uh you uh before you guys did two meetings a week to see uh where the student has reached in terms of uh coding for checks and stuff, and that is how you actually get stuff done. So I just wanted to ask how this will change for a one and a half month, long period of coding, which is actually quite less.

F

In my opinion,.

B

And I I think that I assume that the project team that the mentors and the student will decide how they want to do that. I can tell you what worked for us and I know if, if I'm chosen to mentor, if, if somebody will finally pick up one of the get projects and choose that so that I can mentor if one of the git projects gets selected and we get a student who does it, we will negotiate with the student.

B

But I would personally bias towards twice a week still even with the student, only working roughly half time, because the frequent check-in was so valuable for the student. It left much less time for them to be wandering in the wrong direction before the mentors could point them in the correct direction.

B

So we might, we might go 30 minutes twice a week, but the twice a week was so valuable. We initially started only once a week and once a week just left too long a time for the student to sort of wander or not feel connected to the project and twice a week was much more useful.

B

But but you'll you'll set that as a as a team and thankfully you'll learn by sort of hard experience. What works for you as and for the student.

F

Okay, that that that makes sense to me, uh because the student needs to be uh connected and once a week is actually very less of a time for any team to like get together and work together once a week is very short amount of time.

F

Also, um another question I had was: uh I could so if, if the time period was three months uh the cloud so we could have started the cloud events plugin from scratch almost so um the thing is with the technolon plug-in it's already in poc, and we can kind of build tasks around what needs to get done and then those tasks will be what what would happen on over the period of the coding phase, but uh with something like uh cloud plugin, a cloud events plug-in I'm just uh I'm just not sure how to do the goal, setting exactly uh it probably might be easier.

F

Even for cloud events plugin, because there's one goal: it should be kind of like a book trigger plugin, where, uh upon listening to the cloud event, probably triggered a job or something like that. But uh for for this. For so, how do you do goal setting in uh in something that is a lit involves a bit of like innovation line? I guess.

B

Yeah, so so the we were doing something like that with the git plug-in uh last year's project had a proposal to do something a certain way and as we went through the project we discovered.

B

Oh there were things we didn't know when we did define the project that would now we know during its implementation, we adjusted the the goals. At that time we described hey. We think we need to change your direction and do this other thing.

B

So I think the first objective is that the student in their project plan proposes a goal and that goal that they propose should be something they feel strongly about. This should be my goal as a student in this project and your your phrase sounds like a good one for the cloud events plugin.

B

It should process cloud events when they arrive, uh it should be able to publish cloud events and those those feel like really good goals and that's sort of a vision statement that the student can include in their project plan was. Was that what you were asking me bob or did I misunderstand.

F

Yeah, that means uh that that is uh that makes sense. uh That does make sense, yeah.

B

F

In this way, the student can themselves figure out how to go about their career on this sorry, their part on this g-stock project.

F

So how so uh that actually brings up something interesting is uh how much of the uh project is. Actually student led uh obviously like there are mentors, but how much of the project, like the plan for the project is decided by the student itself.

B

It should be, it should be the student's project plan. So what the? What the, what the jenkins project will accept, is a stu. Ultimately, is a student project plan, a project plan submitted by the student so right now we're in this project ideas: phase where ideas are proposed by anyone, but when, when it comes time to select the the few people, who will actually be authorized to go forward, we'll have mentors assigned and will be staffed projects, then we're.

B

Actually, we are choosing the student's proposed project plan and actually the same project idea could result in multiple plans from different students and we're choosing one of those plans and the student that submitted that plan.

B

Does does that? Does that answer your question.

F

Yeah yeah actually yeah that that actually tells me that I need to do more reading uh on gsoc guidelines and stuff uh yeah, so yeah. But thank you mark thanks. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

B

Yeah and looking forward to this we're going to have fun kara back to you.

A

We're definitely going to have fun. um The only thing I would add to that is that um we very much want the students to contribute open source. We want them to to produce something that they can show, and that is that is the goal, but um an even broader or more fundamental goal is, is actually the student's learning and experience with open source. So it's actually okay for the student to have parts of their gsoc experience be like.

A

Oh, I tried this and it didn't work, and I can explain you know why it didn't work and what what I learned from it and then we went and tried this and that's okay. You know like it doesn't need to be um not every step of this as a work project needs to go perfectly for the student. They are allowed to actually explore and try different things so having that space within their project, idea of like where they're going to figure out their way forward is actually it's it's fine, it's okay!

A

um It gives them more space for them to bring their own creativity and their own trial and error, and the experience of that. So it's not just about you, know, writing production code, although we do want their code to go into production. So does that? Does that does that seem right, mark, yeah, yeah, okay, but yes, having fun is, is the most important part and really enjoying open source and contributing to jenkins great okay? So it's basically top of the hour.

A

Do we have any extra questions for today for our mentors who are with us or do the mentors have any questions.

A

Okay, great, thank you all for being here today with us and we'll see you next week. Bye. Thank.

F

You bye thank you.