A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Discussions about the OpenUru.org Minkata test shard

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rarified
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Re: A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Post by rarified »

Hi Marten,

Do you consider there to be a role for OU to try to assist in the process of making sure content can be passed to Cyan servers in a form that will work with their existing infrastructure, even though at present none of the OU members directly develop content?

One of the base principles (that I believe led to our establishment) was that OU would take on work to reduce the resources Cyan needs to expend to maintain and expand MOULa. In other words, keep their draw on CAVCON to as low as was possible to accommodate open source contributions. Obviously being a bottleneck is not in our charter. But volunteering to be a resource that can advise and perhaps steer input from a diverse set of feeds into a predictable stream of work for Cyan is, I would think. And that function would be effectively served by a step in the feed that applies some form of standards. Not necessarily being a group that dictate standards, but that can help steer standards that accomplish required tasks.

Just thinking out loud at the moment.

_R
One of the OpenUru toolsmiths... a bookbinder.
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Re: A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Post by Doobes »

rarified wrote:Not necessarily being a group that dictate standards, but that can help steer standards that accomplish required tasks.R
Again, you're thinking too much into this. Let me give you an example:

I worked very closely with the Guild of Writers to get the Pub onto Gehn Shard. We had constant dialogue through IRC, they gave me notes on things to improve the Age and I gave them one or two things the Age would require on the programming end (including a problem with hyphenated Age names and Python files that they solved). We didn't delegate tasks or assign jobs...we just did it, then presented it to the others for inspection.

There's already a system of checks and balances in place as far as coding and content. Again, the proof is out there on other shards. We simply need an open channel to Cyan so we can consistently present our ideas and work and they can send back their thoughts on the subject at their earliest convenience. We also need to start putting Minkata through its paces and truly test with the test server. That's what it's there for. If something doesn't work, we can revert back.

To shorten this to bumper sticker size: We need communication, not administration.
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Hoikas
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Re: A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Post by Hoikas »

While you read this, you need to understand that Doobes is already angry. It may not read like it, but he is -- I've worked with him on his ages enough to know. There are plenty of other fans who are in various states of puzzlement, anger, and frustration. I am going to do my best to give them a voice here that they do not know they have about issues they do not understand.

I've been staying out of this because I feel I don't have much political capital here, but I'm going to throw in all of the capital that I have. If this were a game of Democracy 3, this would be the "turn of blazing glory". You might as well go ahead and take a blood pressure pill, because I'm about to unleash a week's worth of my frustration with teenagers at once.

First, I definitely see OpenURU.org as a valid player in the realm of Open Source URU. Or, at least, OU ought to be. There is a fairly well defined role that can be played here. It is quite simple, really: integration. The task at hand here is building the client sources into something that can be tested. Integrating the ages into the client (note I did not say "game") so they can be tested. Staging the changes for testing for eventual inclusion in MOULa. Pushing well-tested MOULa changes to Cyan. Nowhere in that list of responsibilities is being a "gate-keeper" -- so we're not talking about that crap.

I mean, that's the whole reason for this "Foundry" and Minkata, isn't it?

There is just one small problem... OU is failing at these tasks.

Recently on MOULa, there was a clothing update from Zesty of Xeniphers with a few shirts for her Guild of Wizards. It was not sent through integration testing here at OU. I was in the process of pulling the latest MOULa delta over for Gehn 25, and I discovered a bug in the clothing files. This would have been caught and corrected with proper integration testing here at OU and Minkata. Instead, we find ourselves with broken clothing on MOULa. I appear to be the only person who has noticed. How did we get in this position? OU has been failing at the business of integration. Therefore, Zesty went around the roadblock to get her stuff on MOULa. That's exactly what I did along with a few other friends, except we did not get on MOULa.

We have established that OU is failing at its core business of integration and testing. How did this come to be? We have only to look earlier in the thread at this quote:
rarified wrote:[rarified goes back to fighting GNU automake to build updated Crowd Apache access module for updated Apache server to fix Apache hangs on the foundry.]
OU entered into the open-source Plasma space with the expectation that this would be a huge project and immediately set up the infrastructure for a big project. Those expectations never came to pass. And yet, here we still cling to "the process" where we apparently need to have a huge spreadsheet in a complicated bug tracker just to determine a list of what one individual perceives to be the "requirements" to get fan ages on MOULa.
Spoiler
Excuse me for a moment, but you act like getting fan ages onto MOULa is a new goal. IT IS NOT. The gateway team was formed in 2014 and we are only JUST NOW trying to come up with a list of "requirements" to make that happen. This is nigh unbelievable!
Back on the topic, we are deadlocked on technicalities to get one individual's list of requirements for fan age integration testing to begin. This is when we have to ask ourselves, "are we solving the correct problem?" Or better: "will this directly get us fan ages to test?" You are currently mired in Apache and Solaris hell. I get it--that sucks. But how does Apache get us fan ages on MOULa? It doesn't. You want to make a list of requirements. If the tool you chose (JIRA) has requirements (Apache+Solaris) that are unwieldy or the tool gets in the way of the job, FIND ANOTHER TOOL! That can be as simple as gist or pastebin, a pivotal tracker, or even a wiki page! You can then immediately therefore begin productive work. Apache has absolutely nothing to do with URU.

We are all volunteers here. Windows of opportunity are short, so we need to be productive immediately therefore. If process gets in the way of productivity, then we await the next window to be productive, but wait, Minkata still has a broken vault? Wait some more. Still broken? Wait some more. Oh hey, two years have passed! And that's with zero visible progress. This is the current story.

Please, I implore you, do not let your marriage to these tools: JIRA, Solaris, Apache, etc. cost us. While we are all technical users and appreciate the effort in getting this stuff up and running, you've got to realize... The average user has no idea what the hell we're doing when we talk about Apache, automake, Solaris, MOSS, JIRA--all they know is that it's not fan ages on MOULa. It's all hieroglyphics to them. And again, years pass, and the fans who desperately want to play fan ages on MOULa see no progress. Therefore, they conclude that it's not going to happen, lose hope, and eventually leave.

The only thing that will kill URU is when all of its players are gone, and we are slowly seeing it happen. Fan content is the only solution here--are we going to let marriage to tools prevent progress on that front or will we adapt and conquer? Again, there are two shards that have fan content successfully integrated. We planned using the method of least resistance and smashed the wall down. A lot has been learned, you should try soliciting advice :)

EDIT: Minor grammar cleanups
Last edited by Hoikas on Fri Jan 27, 2017 3:46 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Post by JWPlatt »

The time you spent for us on your post is much appreciated and useful, and we will try to make your (collective) efforts worthwhile. "Staying out of it" is not necessary because that is not what we needed. I was looking forward to a post from you, and it was constructive. We are discussing what we should change and, no, it won't take very long.

JW
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Hoikas
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Re: A Planning Thread [Discussion]

Post by Hoikas »

:)

Next time I will rant about one of my epic failures (of which there have been a great many)...
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