Attendees: @julienmalka @janik @jleightcap @fricklerhandwerk (later: @mightyiam)
Preparation of Summer of Nix, and in response to recent community inquiries
Agenda
- clarify purpose and goals of the summer program
- address open questions
- what exactly to work on
- technical issues and strategy
Purpose and goals
-
@julienmalka: a lot of people seem to be doubtful whether what we’re doing is worth the money
- but also we’re supposed to deliver what NLnet expects
- should have concrete metrics for what we want to achieve, and what the community gets out of it
- we have two approaches with mob programming and mentoring, the setup seems good
-
@jleightcap: is it an explicit goal this year to benchmark the effectiveness of different formats?
-
@fricklerhandwerk: having a “format” is a historical condition
- the first iteration had to do something to show results
- load bearing decisions were often put on one person, it apparently was chaotic
- @mightyiam proposed to @mat to extend his experiment with mob programming
- now we’re back to evaluating what’s the best way to do things, and building that organisational knowledge is a desirable byproduct
-
@fricklerhandwerk: having a “format” is a historical condition
- @janik: what exactly is NGI0’s goal for Summer of Nix?
-
@fricklerhandwerk: NGI0 funds enable a variety of things
- key deliverable for this year: NGIpkgs Overview
- first step: Programmatically find Nix packages of NLnet projects · Issue #166 · ngi-nix/ngipkgs · GitHub
- should be done by the maintenance mob with @mightyiam
-
@jleightcap wanted to work on packaging NGI open hardware intiative
- start with Ringdove EDA · Issue #13 · ngi-nix/ngipkgs · GitHub
- also possibly pick up some bit-rotted flakes (e.g. riscv-phone)
- @janik with their group will pick up open tasks that need to be finished:
-
@julienmalka:
- would like participants to upstream as much as possible, also to show that the Nix community has something to gain from the program
-
@fricklerhandwerk: Migrate packages and services into monorepo · Issue #12 · ngi-nix/ngipkgs · GitHub
- @julienmalka: can give each participant one project to work on
-
@janik: good on the concept, but not sure about mob programming and the upstreaming process
- in the past, flakes were put upstream
- NGIpkgs seems to be a lot of overhead to maintain
- a lot of people would be happy if we put packages into Nixpkgs
- there’s much more and better infrastructure in Nixpkgs
-
@fricklerhandwerk: as I commented on Discourse, there’s cost associated with upstreaming to Nixpkgs
- @jleightcap: and some of that software likely unfit for Nixpkgs (both for quality/maturity and simply outside of domain)
- (we refined what to put into Nixpkgs and NGIpkgs respectively)
- @janik and @julienmalka are available to help with reviews and merging PRs from other Summer of Nix team
-
@fricklerhandwerk: the NGIpkgs infrastructure issues merely need to get addressed, we have budget for it
- @janik will find someone to mentor to work on NGI0 infrastructure
-
@julienmalka on recruitment:
- got 20 applications so far
- diversity is fairly low, many applications from BSc and MSc students from India
- @janik: the marketing team is preparing a post
-
@fricklerhandwerk reached out to multiple orgs fostering diversity in tech
- got 3 contacts, forwarded the call for participants
- also joined an NGI0 communications group to reach out into the network
- not much seems to have come out of that
- @julienmalka reached out to universities, but no replies
-
@janik: will encourage mob members to write social media posts about what we’re doing
- @fricklerhandwerk: great idea, this should be absolutely voluntary though