Re: help wanted with the Ruby toolchain
Hi,
I would be glad to help you in this process, should be a great challenge
and opportunity to learn. Probably I do not have all the skills to do it
by myself, but I am in. You can count with me.
Cheers.
On 2017-08-28 19:07, Antonio Terceiro wrote:
> To: debian-ruby@lists.debian.org
> Subject: help wanted with the Ruby toolchain
>
> Hi,
>
> This is a call for help with the Ruby toolchain. We, the current maintainers
> (Antonio Terceiro and Christian Hofstaedtler) are not planning to go away, but
> we need more people to help with keeping Ruby up to date in Debian (and
> derivatives).
>
> What exactly is the Ruby toolchain
> ----------------------------------
>
> The Ruby toolchain is the set of packages you need for a basic, functional Ruby
> installation, and to build the rest of the Ruby packages. This includes the
> following source packages:
>
> core toolchain:
>
> * bundler
> * gem2deb
> * rubyX.Y (currently X.Y = 2.3)
> * ruby-defaults
> * rubygems-integration
> * ruby-standalone
>
> packages extracted from standard library:
>
> * rake
> * ruby-did-you-mean
> * ruby-minitest
> * ruby-net-telnet
> * ruby-openssl (not yet strictly speaking, but will be for ruby2.5)
> * ruby-test-unit
>
> Notes:
>
> * There may be other packages extracted from the standard library in ruby2.5
> beyond ruby-openssl, so this list may grow a little bit.
> * Some of the packages above are already managed like any other team package,
> thanks for those already working on them. Ideally, all of them should.
>
> What maintaining the Ruby toolchain entails
> -------------------------------------------
>
> Generally, maintaining the Ruby toolchain means two things:
>
> 1) keeping the Ruby toolchain packages in shape
>
> There is nothing very special this, except that it requires a certain
> amount of care given the large amount of other packages that depend on
> the Ruby toolchain. We are currently good enough with regards to
> automated testing. I would say that it should be fairly easy to know
> when things break, so this should not prevent anyone from sleeping at
> night.
>
> 2) handling Ruby transitions
>
> A transition is the process by which we replace rubyX.Y with rubyX.(Y+1)
> (or +2). This part is the one that requires the most amount of work, but
> it only needs to happen once for each Debian release. In the past we did
> it twice per release, but we recently agreed to do a single transition
> for Buster going from ruby2.3 to ruby2.5 [TRANSITION-BUSTER], and if
> that works well there will be no reason for us to go back to doing two
> per cycle.
>
> At this point, the process is fairly understood, and documented at the
> wiki [TRANSITION-DOC]. That documentation could, and probably should,
> be expanded.
>
> The entire Ruby team does really nice work fixing the stuff that needs
> to be fixed. The role of the toolchain maintainers here is more having
> an overview of the process: keeping track of what needs to be fixed,
> reporting bugs, poking people to fix their stuff, eventually writing
> patches to fix important blockers, keeping the release team informed,
> etc. This is a reasonable amount of work, but it also gives you a nice
> view of how the release process works (at least with regards to testing
> migration), how Ruby works, etc. In general, I always feel I learn a
> lot during these transitions.
>
> What are (were?) our immediate plans
> ------------------------------------
>
> ruby2.5 should be released by Christmas 2017, and that's what we will
> have in Debian 10 (buster). By November we should have an RC or preview
> release out, so we could be doing test rebuilds and all that with a
> preview of ruby2.5 even before the actual release. The sooner we start
> working on it, the more time we will have to get things in shape for the
> release.
>
> Also, Ubuntu 18.04 freezes in the beginning of 2018. It would be nice if
> at least the basic part of the migration is done by then, so they can
> already release with ruby2.5. If you care about Ruby on Ubuntu, it
> would be in your interest to help.
>
> What we want from potential co-maintainers
> ------------------------------------------
>
> Basically we need help with the tasks described above, because depending
> on only the two of us will make the upcoming transition take longer than
> usual. Neither of us will be able to be the main drivers, but we will be
> around to help, answer questions, etc. Once we have a few volunteers to
> help, we can think of ways of improving knowledge transfer and the
> available documentation, such as IRC/videoconf sessions, sprints, etc.
>
> If you are willing to come on board, please say so. You do not need to
> be a DD or DM to help.
>
> References
> ----------
>
> [TRANSITION-BUSTER]
> https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20170609012532.mh5kkn452izczoq4@debian.org
> [TRANSITION-DOC] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby/InterpreterTransitions
>
> Thanks,
--
Lucas Kanashiro
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