Posted by dahacouk on February 22, 2015 at 2:26pm
In order to get some momentum going I'm setting up Google Hangouts for every Wednesday at 15:15 UTC as events on the Drupal Social Initiative Google+ page. Of course people don't have to be on every Hangout and we can keep them short. But it's good to have regular checkins.
Here's some points for discussion:
REQUIREMENTS:
- Requirements.
- User stories.
- Make UI mockups for configuration and user views.
- We need to do sequence diagram for how things are going to work.
CODE:
- We start work on Drupal 8 code for "creating content on Drupal and simultaneously posting to social networks" as selected at DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014 BoF.
- Which relate to the Common Social API Configuration issue in the Drupal Social API project.
- Also see ancient issue A consolidated UI for some socialmedia modules.
REPO:
- Do we set up a repo on https://github.com/drupalsocialinitiative for a working site?
- Or do we use https://www.drupal.org/project/social_api straight away?
SITE:
- Spin up a sites on dedicated DigitalOcean VM:
- Subdomain: dsi? Or drupalsocialinitiative? Or drupalsocialapi? Or socialapi?
- Kendra Initiative is happy to sponsor drupalsocialinitiative test VM.
BUILD MANAGEMENT:
- Manage build with Ansible?
- What else?
- We regularly kill the server and start anew and bring it all back from repo and backups afresh. Always like to do this to check integrity of code/db backups and backup system.
Hope to see you there!
Comments
Setting up a repo.
Setting up a repo. Definitely.
Just wondered if you had a
Just wondered if you had a look at API Hub, it does what you're looking to do in terms of providing one module to connect with many different social networks. Would be a good start, unless you're considering starting from scratch again:
https://github.com/Realityloop/apihub
Video?
Steve? You got a video or any information? Because I looked around and couldn't find anything. Cheers!
Hmm... although it was an
Hmm... although it was an official session I don't see the video on the DA's YT channel :( There was a BoF also which I went to - it's similar in ways to what the WYSIWYG module was. The talk was very similar in content to what you've been talking about over the years in terms of publishing to different platforms too.
Totally new?
I even made a comment on their BoF but I can see nothing more anywhere of any significance. Please can you contact the developers and see what's going on?
Link to first Hangout
https://plus.google.com/b/100492205308969663838/events/ckk91ohe5b3kig2oc...
Big omission: Requirements
I totally forgot about how we need to get requirements before we do anything else. We need to plan. Make UI mockups for configuration and user views. We need to do sequence diagram for how things are going to work. We should really do this before we get down to too much code, right?
Could be a good idea ;)
Could be a good idea ;)
UI mockups are a bit down the line though, I would suggest focusing on functionality and being able to plug into a user's UI of choice (if any).
For client projects I use the following two methods. The first helps prioritise what parts to focus on, the second then helps define those parts:
http://www.impactmapping.org/example.php
http://dannorth.net/introducing-bdd/
There was a session on BDD at Bogota but again the video doesn't seem to be on DA's YT channel :( There's plenty of Drupal BDD stuff around though.
https://latinamerica2015.drupal.org/session/behavior-driven-development-...
I'm a great believer in code not being the first thing you do, and in not coding any more than you need to. In theory, practice is a bit harder but hey, got to have a try eh ;)
What we need to do in the next Hangout...
OK. That's good information. If you find any handy videos then I'm all eyes. I'm a visual person so I like UI mockups and flow diagrams even though they may not anything like the final versions.
But what we need to do in the next Hangout is map out the tools and create the space(s) for us all to be able to work collaboratively. And create the encouraging signposts to these spaces. Like where can we create diagrams / UI mockups that are collaborative? Google Drive?
And where is the best place to do what you want to do with the group? This BDD stuff? In the issue queue? Which one? The Drupal project or the GitHub repo?
These are all management decisions that will make it easier for people to join and participate and 'get' what we are doing and 'where' we are the instant they land.
The current trend seems to be
The current trend seems to be to use Github then push back to Drupal.org. At the moment d.o infrastructure isn't great for this sort of stuff, so I'd say, in an impact mapping way, if we want the maximum visibility then github is a good way to go.
I've been hearing about how the Drupal Commerce tax rules, currency formatting, etc. for Drupal 8 is going to be built so it can work on other projects too not just Drupal. This could be good to consider too.
In terms of BDD, there's plenty of videos and resources online about it, I'd say if you could try writing some high-level features that would help others understand what exactly it is you have in mind. I'm always wary of projects where people can't or won't write down what it is they want to build, because generally the wrong thing gets built. You've mentioned you're not technical in terms of coding so for me certainly it would help if you could do this.
Take a look at...
Firstly to say that it isn't just me the wants this to happen or that has the vision of what should happen. We all (or anyone who has a vision) needs to put their ideas down in some form or other – words or diagram.
I know for a fact that there are loads of ideas out there. For me I have my own ideas and I want to work in a team of people who also have their own ideas. Have you read through all the issues in the Drupal project?
See: https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/social_api?status=All&categories=All
And have you got any comments on them? If so please comment on them as I'm sure the authors would want some feedback. Yeah?
Hope you can give some feedback on those issues in the issues in time for the next call. ;-)
Heh, I see the posters are
Heh, I see the posters are Guy and his business partner. Well, Guy lives about a mile or two away from me here in Brightoncisco so can potentially get together IRL to work on this at our local contrib meetups or otherwise. I know Guy's pretty busy maintaining commerce stock control, it's ace to see him interested in this too.
I quickly read through most of the issues - pretty much describes what API hub does, so I'd suggest having a play with that if there's a working version on github, I've not tried it for a while.
I realise we want a group of people to work on it, however stuff always works better when there's a leader, it's one of the winning formulas of Drupal itself. What I meant from you doing some BDD stuff (which I see you've pretty much done in the issues saying 'as a X and given Y when I do Z, A should happen' - I just think it would be good to discover a bit more about what's in your mind as you've been the one spearheading this for years now (pretty sure I remember BoFs in DrupalCon London/Croydon!) so it would be good to see your vision a little more clearly, as I feel I don't right now. Well, not any more than saying 'install APIHub'.
If I'm the leader, Steve,
If I'm the leader, Steve, then you'll just have to follow my kind of leadership and methodology! Or are you a backseat leader? ;-) Ha! Actually, though, I see myself as crazy enough to have dreams of stuff working together in a smooth and integrated way. And my role is motivator. That's to say I keep on saying "wouldn't it be good if..." But I need people to take up other roles in the team. So, rather than having leaders and followers we could just say that we all have a unique role to play in the project. And things, as I have noticed, tend to go a lot smoother when we all get to pick the roles that we play and the tasks that we carry out. Hence, it's really good, I feel, if we just list what needs to be done and then see who takes up those tasks. How does that sound?
What I mean is I believe you
What I mean is I believe you have taken the lead on this so far, so it would be good to know why - what is it you want. I'm sure you'll get people to build it for you, that's plain to see as we're all here now. What I see now though is you're asking for us to build something which is already there, in the form of API Hub. If that doesn't do exactly what you want it to do then it can be extended. I don't see the point in just coding more stuff, that's why I use Drupal in the first place. As I see it at the moment, you have a module you want building, so you should be able to explain what you want it to do, and if that means organising existing issues into a more complete story then I do see that as your role. I'd like this functionality, and if I wanted to use it, I'd use API Hub to do it. So, job done? If not, then what? ;)
My interest I am seeing is further away from this, API Hub is one component, however I'm more interested in being able to build a decentralised drupal.org as at the moment it's a single point of failure for our community, controlled by a commercial, although non-profit, entity. The mechanics of that simply don't work in the long-run in our decentralised, distributed world. It doesn't scale well, and it prone to take-over, unfair influence, etc.
That's a bit bigger than API Hub alone though, which is why I wanted to find out more about what the goal here is and thus where I'm going to be focusing my attention.
All good points Steve and we
All good points Steve and we are actually very similar in our goals, wanting a totally decentralised world in all aspects. However, not being a developer means I can't even start to understand API Hub from a GitHub repo with little to no documentation, pictures or videos. If you want to get a demo site up and running and give me a demo then that would be lovely.
And I agree we shouldn't start coding anything until we know what we want and know what's out there. As I said I hate typing and that's why I like Hangout catchups. You have questions you want answered. Ask me there.
Also, why are the issues in the Drupal project not enough of an idea of what we want to do? If there is detail lack please ask specific questions in those issues. Or wait for a call? Yeah?
It's a Sunday and I need to get some sun before it goes down. I'm travelling Monday and Tuesday so won't be doing much work before Wednesday. Look forward to the call and/or comments of issues.
I take it you must be
I take it you must be stateside then - pretty dark here in UK!
I'll have a play with the API Hub and see what I can do - demo site or something.
Can't promise on the hangout - yes they're ok and google hangouts are the best option of the lot, however after initially not liking d.o.'s text approach, it does work very well. People can't be interrupted, everyone gets to say what they want to say, it's searchable, hyperlinkable, etc. Video takes a while to watch through (especially if the whole project's organised via video or a lot of it), and if you want to be part of the live thing then you've got to be there at a certain time, and I never know from one day to another whether I'm going to be available at that time for one reason or another, so for me text works fine, but that's just me! So don't hate me if I'm not around, but that's why I used Free software, because I can dip in and out when I want.
Actually...
Actually, I'm in La Palma, Canary Islands. It's a good place to work on Internet projects. Not many distractions except sun and sea. ;-) Back to the UK on Tuesday! :-(
It would be awesome to see API Hub in action. Nice one!
Agreed, don't like watching video of recorded chats. But I feel live chats are good for checking in especially when there are so many unknowns. But agree most work should and will be done over text one way or another. Not a big issue either way. We are only talking about an hour a week or every two weeks. Not much. But hey, Insha'Allah!
Drupal issue queue lack with
Drupal issue queue lack with integration inside code, don't have a good code review interface and not very intuitive when someone want to contrib to a module. You can see that most of Gizra contrib module development moved to github(i.e og, message stack and restful)
Move all issues to GitHub?
So, Roy, you are saying we should move all those issues to GitHub too?
Any furthur development for
Any furthur development for SAPI should be in done github
I won't be able to be in the
I won't be able to be in the hangouts at all if they were be recorded that's grate.
About the workflow and BDD. As steve mentioned the current workflow is to push the main code to github and do the releases via d.o. BDD it's just a form of testing and suitable for what we planning - from point of what BDD is nor the way we going to develop the components of social api(or SAPI).
What we doing for now in OpenScholar and in other projects is: we developing and do QA manually after that writing tests with behat unless this is a security issue. Then we not merging without writing test.
What i do like to do is that after this the hangout you'll crate repo for each purpose with a good readme file or issues so i or any other could start and write code. Of course mention the core version - 7 or 8.
Not sure about the hangouts
Not sure about the hangouts either, I never know how I'm going to be from day to day to be honest, but that's another story ;)
I'm keen to push the BDD side as we've a range of people posting from very technical to not-so-technical (which I love btw because that's how it's supposed to be!) and BDD helps everyone understand what's being built.
I feel at the moment there's stuff out there we could use, like API Hub, but don't want to start code until we know what it is we are coding. As I see it, we want to be able to post to multiple services easily, that's what API Hub does. I do know the conversation goes further than that though, but haven't seen that expressed here or in the issue queue. Unless I've missed it, which I may very well have done.
Looking forward to Barcelona very much! Wanted to go for years but missed devdays there :(
And of course after the
And of course after the option will be available - i'll crate a BOF in DDD2015 site and i hope i could make it to Barcelona.
Roy? Hangouts?
Roy? Are you saying you don't like Hangouts? Or that these Hangouts are at the wrong time? What form of communication and when is best for you? Personally, I hate typing.
I love hangouts, because we
I love hangouts, because we are scattered around the globe. If the association run his meetups with hangout i don't think we so difference. 15:15 utc in Wednesday isn't good for me. Friday could be good time.